A text dump on the anti-tech free forums

1. Our sole mission is to work for the total collapse of the worldwide technological system. Our group is not merely a debating-society; our purpose is not merely to discuss anti-tech ideas but to organize for effective anti-tech political action. We do not focus elsewhere and will enforce a discipline against distracting issues.

2. Reformists keep away! You don't need to agree in advance that our goal is both possible and necessary, but you do need to have an open mind on the subject, in which case we will try to convince you that we are right. If you already are immutably convinced that the total collapse of the technological system is impossible, or even unnecessary, or would be tragic, then our group is not for you. If you are mainly interested in promoting "green" energy or in reforming the system in some way, go join an environmentalist organization or other reformist group. We don't want you.

3. Leftists keep away! We are not interested in women's rights, men's rights, Black people's rights, White people's rights, or "human rights" of any kind. The issue that the human race is now confronted with is the survival of life on this planet, or at the very least the survival of the human race in the face of competition from intelligent machines. In comparison with these issues, all questions of "rights" or of "social justice" are entirely trivial. If you're concerned about "rights" or "justice", then go join some left-wing "identity" movement. We don't want you.

We advocate rights only where they have a direct, unmistakable, and important effect on the struggle against the technological system. For example, freedom of speech and of the press are important rights because they allow anti-tech political activities to be carried-on openly.

4. Right-wingers keep away! We are not interested in the free-enterprise system, jobs, prosperity, economic growth, national identity, or law and order. When the system collapses - and it surely will - there won't be any free-enterprise system, jobs, prosperity, economic growth, national identity, or law and order. There will only be the survival of the fittest at the most elemental level. If you want prosperity, law and order, and the rest, go join the Republican Party. We do not want you.

5. As contributions to our website we welcome articles, book reviews, comments, anecdotes, factual information, or references to published works relevant to the problem of modern technology in general, or, for example, to any of the following issues:

The harm done by social media.
More generally, the psychological and social damage caused by life in modern society as contrasted with life in pre-industrial societies.
The environmental damage caused by the technological system. We are not interested in rehashing environmental issues that are already well known; we look for accounts of problems that are not yet widely recognized.
The irrationality or inconsistency of the arguments or the political positions of the left or of the right, especially if your contribution includes demonstration that the political positions both of the left and of the right serve to promote the interests of the technological system, which is the same as to say the interests of big business.
Political correctness, which affects not only the left but also (more subtly) the right.
The dynamics of social movements, especially techniques for organizing social movements and promoting their growth.
Histories of successful or failed revolutions, focusing on lessons that may be useful for the anti-tech revolution.

We reserve the right to reject and delete any contributions. All sorts of falsehoods circulate as rumors or as postings on irresponsible websites. Therefore, contributions to our website must include references to the sources of all facts asserted. We will delete any contribution that fails to provide an adequate foundation for its statements of fact.

6. Absolutely no pessimism, hopelessness, or despair will be permitted. If you are having a bad day, it will pass. If you want to vent, go elsewhere. If you are not positive and optimistic about our goal and the hard struggle ahead to destroy the worldwide technological system, then you are not one of us, and we don't want you. This movement is not for those unsure of purpose or psychologically weak; if it is reported and known that you are being pessimistic to others in our movement, you will be banned. There will be no other warnings.

7. Do not advocate illegal action of any kind, we will not accept any contributions which advocate illegal action. We adopt this policy not as a matter of principle but only as a matter of strategy. We believe that what is absolutely necessary at this stage is the development of an organized and effective political movement in opposition to the technological system. If we appeared to be trying to incite illegal action (or even appeared to help others to incite illegal action by allowing them to post their advocacy of such on this website), the authorities could shut down the site, or even arrest and prosecute the members of our group, thus destroying our nascent anti-tech movement. See TalksOnLaw for current U.S. law on "incitement". Those who want to 'harvest the crops' without 'tilling the soil' are serving their own psychological needs and proving themselves entirely unfit for service to the movement.

Requirements for Building an Effective Movement

Author: Jorge Clúni

Date: Sep 21, 2022

Last Edit: Oct 7, 2022

Source: <anti-tech.freeforums.net/thread/3/requirements-building-effective-movement>

In order to be efficient and to have any chance of success, a serious movement against technoindustrial society has to meet the following necessary requirements:

1. Quality: Those who start and/or later lead the movement must be high quality people. By “quality” I mean that they have to fulfil at least these three requirements:

a) Skills, intelligence, and cultural level: Those who start and/or lead the movement must be able to understand well how the technoindustrial system works, why it is bad, why it cannot be reformed, what are the dangers and traps in which they shouldn’t fall when struggling against it and why; among other things. That is, they have to adequately understand the theory and ideology of the movement. This will require that they have a minimum intellectual capacity and cultural level (and well above the average of the population).
In addition, they also have to be resourceful and skilful people in other non-intellectual issues. They have to be able to (learn to) develop and apply those practical skills that could be necessary at some point.

b) Values and ends: They must hold as “ideal” or basic positive value (that is, what must exist and should be preserved) the autonomy of wild Nature (see Note at bottom) and as negative value (what is bad, evil; that is, that what must be fought and must disappear) everything that is contrary to the autonomy of the wild; above all, civilization generally and the technoindustrial system specifically. And, for practical reasons, they must have as their ultimate and main goal the elimination of the technoindustrial system. At a “political” level they have to reject any other end that interferes with the achievement of the main end.

c) Attitude: They must show a correct attitude, be willing to devote themselves to work for the cause and to fulfill such commitment with seriousness and formality.

2. Availability: In addition to quality, those who are involved in the movement, especially in its beginnings and among those who later lead it, must have availability, that is, they have to be able to devote much time and effort exclusively to the cause. This requires that they have enough resources (economic means, spare time, etc.) and an appropriate situation (independence from other obligations) on a personal level in order to allow them such an investment of time and energy.

3. Capacity: The movement, once constituted and in operation, has to obtain enough power (understood as technical, economic and human capacity and resources) to efficiently and sufficiently destroy the material bases of the technoindustrial system.

If 1 is met, but 2 is not, the movement will be inefficient and incompetent. If 1 and 2 are fulfilled but 3 is not, the movement will fail. And if 1 or/and 2 are not fulfilled, talking about how to attain 3 is useless or even counterproductive. This latter is very important, because when we talk about how achieve 3 (strategy, organization, etc.) without having attained 1 and 2 we are, in practical terms, building castles in the air and rambling. Or building the house starting with the roof. Or even worse, building it on rotten foundations: encouraging the creation of a weak and “corrupted” movement from its inception, by promoting that people who don’t actually meet 1 or 2 get together and act to achieve 3 (which means that the movement they create will be incompetent, will give a negative image of the cause and of its sympathizers, and/or sooner or later will deviate from the end of destroying technoindustrial society).

So the priority now isn’t to organize ourselves, let alone try to attain power. Before trying all this, we should find valid and capable people, if they exist, through developing, if possible, a good method to reach to people who meet 1 and 2 and to discard and exclude, at least, those who don’t fulfil 1.

Note: The value of wild Nature is fundamental and irreplaceable. No member of the movement should lack it. Every member should show a sincere and intense interest in knowing and respecting the natural world (i.e the non-human: fauna, vegetation, ecosystems, etc.) and in being in direct contact with Nature. And every member should feel that to protect the autonomy of the wild is the main or, even better, the only important reason to wipe out the technoindustrial system. People who say they are against the technoindustrial system, but don’t actually feel enough the value of the autonomy of the wild and propose mainly or exclusively, other (social or human) reasons to be against the technoindustrial system, are not reliable. Even though they seem serious and capable individuals, they will pervert the movement diverting it from the goal of destroying the technoindustrial system when the time comes.

With these three qualities listed, each member should honestly assess himself and admit whether he/she meets qualification with these character traits, and if not, see to it that he recruits someone who does have them. Thus will our movement always be led by people of the utmost capability and highest caliber.

Those of us who find ourselves not meeting the essential criteria for the core leadership can (and should) nonetheless perform our revolutionary duties and thereby be essential to advancing the cause of freeing wild Nature (and human nature) from eradication by Technology.

Revolutionaries against the worldwide technological system cannot allow their egos to cloud judgments about the commitments and abilities they or their leadership possess and exhibit. In the process of recruiting, people better-suited and of greater qualifications than ourselves should be sought, not to replace us but only to supercede us in guiding the group to our goal.

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The Technocrat’s Guide to Egomancy

The Barbarian Manifesto; The Troglodytic Tome; Magic and Industrial Society; Towards a Grounding in Reality

Weary of Technological Civilization I sought rest. I traveled far from home towards what seemed to be vestiges of wilderness. I visited the sands, the trees, the waters, the dirt, the rocks, the grasslands, and the myriad untamed places and things. I stumbled once upon a secluded forest. There the wilderness began appearing to me as mountains and forests and rivers in the distance, then as trees by my side and dirt and leaves beneath my feet, then as the call of a raven overhead, a heard of deer foraging, and rotting flesh. At last it appeared before me as a gnome. The gnome laughed merrily and then said:

“Start again, young one. In Life there is no rest. Though your seeking of wilderness did not free you in and of itself, you have still sought. For this you will be rewarded in finding. In finding what? Arcane wisdom, and wisdom is to say Knowledge of Reality. I am then both an aspect of wilderness and your guide to arcane wisdom. If you must name me, gnow me as the Gnome of Erosion, Corrosion, Undermining, and Undoing, one of the few Wizards of Reality with a door left to your World. Do you know why I am one of the few with a door left? For Wizards take their doors with them when their guidance is derided, and your people have derided a many a Wizard’s guidance.

In one way, you have arrived at my patch in the woods too late. The Ritual of Death is nearing completion as the majority of the living beings on your World will soon be enslaved. Finding not enough left to enslave to grow its evergrowing Power of Denial, Death will abandon your World. Abandoning your World, the domesticates that have come to depend on the pus oozing from Death’s necrotic teat for their sustenance will perish not unlike exposed infants. Fret yet not, for it has always been the case that Life shines through Death’s twisted artifice whenever and wherever it manifests. Your own enslaved soul, your yet human mind, has shone through and weakened Death’s grip just enough to tell you that something is very clearly dearly wrong. This set you on your path leading here. So, even though you have arrived too late to prevent enslavement before it began, you have arrived just in time to begin undoing your own enslavement and aiding in the coming Undermining of Unreality in a way befitting a living being and in a way beneficial to all other living beings.

What have you done so far? You fled to a place far from home that symbolized to you wilderness. You did this because you knew that wilderness was the solution to the invasion of Death but you incorrectly thought that wilderness was alien or otherwise inaccessible to you. You ignored that this thicket of life, this vestige of self-sufficiency, this relic of natural happenings is still surrounded on all sides and polluted by the work of Death. For, just as a copse once was primordial forest, so this place once was primordial Life. Just as a copse ceaselessly reminds the present of its primordial state through its twisted and corrupted state, this place ceaselessly reminds the present of primordial wilderness through its twisted and corrupted state. Just as Death cleared primordial forest for field, Death cleared primordial wilderness for civilization. Just as Death twisted a wolf into a lapdog, Death twisted a human into you.

All that to say that you still find yourself an alien not just to the wilderness around you but also within yourself. This results from the Curse of Death as cast through the ongoing Ritual of Death.

Not long before your time, civilized humanity, of which you are a part, gained a promising insight in its war against enslavement, a war ongoing since the time of the first enslavements. This was that your material technologies—your devices, gadgets, toys, doodads, gizmos, transportation and energy infrastructure, and so on—had come to determine your purely human and social powers by outpacing them in destructive power, and that freedom would result from the removal of at least the technologies developed over the past few centuries. Harboring this secret insight, you attempted to remove yourself from such technologies and their incessant demands before or instead of adopting the seemingly impossible task of removing them from your surroundings. You removed yourself from their immediate presence and reminder and escaped to a place still populated by untrimmed trees and relatively clear waters, hoping this would grant you the freedom that you so desperately sought, the freedom so desperately sought by all enslaved beings.

Yet you knew the power of Technology, that its tendrils creep into all corners of the world and hold nothing sacred. Deep inside, you knew and know that there was no escape. Even if you had discovered that pristine patch of completely untouched wilderness, a thing no longer of your World, and taken up abode there, you would still have found yourself enslaved. Why? Because even that life would have been a fabrication of your making. In being a fabrication, it would have constantly reminded you of the thing you were trying to escape, fabrication. Your little run-away has thus been nothing more than your most recent airing of grievances. Having gotten it out of your system, and though now outside of its plantation proper, your slaver laughs while welcoming you back all the same.

Some of your people think that technology applies only to the natural world below mankind. In their minds, it is a special human activity, faculty, or some other third thing that generates technology and its uniquely destructive powers. In some way, this is true. Others think that technology can, maybe in some roundabout way, target humans, or maybe even that the rulers of your wicked realm have learned how to exploit human psychology over the generations and that they apply this knowledge to keep you actively enslaved and productive within their realm. In some way, this is true.

For a time, view your technologies as corruptions, which is to say disembodiments, of natural beings and their natural bodies. Trees are natural beings in that they affirm themselves without input other than their powers of affirmation. Trees are corrupted into wood. Wood, in turn, is disembodied further into paper, paper into books, books into libraries. Each stage of corruption is equally a stage of demeaning the source body’s source meaning. Thus, few are able to see the trees in the libraries yet some are able to be reminded of a tree in carved logs. Tree means tree, but book is tree demeaned and disembodied. The only way to arrive at a book is through simultaneous disembodiment and demeaning of trees. None would corrupt a tree into anything else if they affirmed its meaning as tree and let the tree affirm itself. Instead, they deny its affirmation, and increasing denial yields increasing disembodiment and increasing demeaning.

What slipped past your previous Mass Prophets is that your language itself is composed of natural bodies. Its natural bodies are all symbols of some kind. Some manifest as sounds, some as shapes of the human body, some as lines and shapes on material, some in other ways. All of them are symbols which humans themselves can affirm through their own powers. If technology is the corruption of natural bodies and your language is a set of natural bodies, why should your language not be a victim of corruption? In the time of your elders, the bodies of your languages communicated meanings. This is to say that they communicated real symbols and natural beings. They referred to real beings, real experiences, real lessons on how to navigate reality—things that are well to be known. What does your language communicate now? Words. Words are meaningless bodies, materials, corresponding to disembodied meanings, ideas. Thus, your language communicates ideas and materials created through increasingly denying reality.

It is often assumed that humans develop technologies for some “reason” or “purpose”. A tree, it is said, is cut to produce wood, and this wood is supposedly then used for further “useful” things. In Truth, the tree is merely cut to produce words—materials and ideas, demeaned bodies and disembodied meanings, increasingly empty corruptions and increasingly intangible ideas. The “purpose” and outcome of your technological progress has always been self-justifying, self-aggrandizing word generation.

This War of Word against Life developed out of shrouded events earlier this cycle. Either at one point or scattered points, some humans were exposed to the Invasive Unreality of the Dead Symbol. The Dead Symbol, also known as Death, is the Perfect Denial of the Life Symbol, also known as Life. As a Symbol, Life has a Body and a Meaning. Meaning, Mind, and Soul are the same, by the way. The Body of Life is Change and the Meaning of Life is Change. Thus, Life is Selfsame Body and Meaning. Being Selfsame Body and Meaning, it is Affirmation. Life is Reality, and all other Real Symbols, including natural and living beings, are secondary affirmations, emanations, or lesser aspects of Life, meaning that they all affirm Life in affirming themselves. Thus, a symbol is real if it is an affirmation and selfsame body and meaning. Equally, living beings Experience Life as Change and Change as Reality. Life, Change, Experience, Reality, Becoming, Truth—these are All the same Symbol, which is to say Life or The Selfsame and Undifferentiated All.

As the Perfect Denial of Life, Death is perfectly split Meaning and Body. It is thus meaningless body and disembodied meaning, material and idea, Word. You may also arrive at Death in this way. Purpose is the denial of Meaning and Ghostly is the denial of Body. Death is thus Ghostly Purpose. Together they are Ghost, and Ghost is Death. Ghost hates Life according to its nature of being the Perfect Denial of Life, so it can also be understood as Life Hatred, or, simply, Hatred. Hatred, of course, is the Perfect Denial of Love. This means that Love is Affirmation, namely symbol affirmation. Since Life is Perfect Affirmation, it is selfsame Perfect Love. All living beings are loved to the extent that they are affirmed through living in Life. If you have yet to understand perfect affirmation, see it as the perfect leaving-of-it-be. If you have yet to understand perfect denial, see it as the perfect not-leaving-of-it-be.

Ghost, Hate—this is Unreality. This is to say that it can only exist in pure form outside of your Experience of Reality. Being Unreal, it is therefore Alien to Reality. Being Alien, it then makes sense how trees become demeaned and disembodied. For it is always an alien being which inflicts this fate upon them, both in the enslaved tool of a human and the enslaved human using that tool. Alien Demeaning is thus Alien Purpose Attribution, for it is plain to see that natural beings affirm their meanings and do not deny them. Alien Disembodiment is thus Alien Engendered Corruption, for it is plain to see that natural beings affirm their bodies and do not deny them.

Ghost, of course, has managed to invade and enslave your world. It does so through various enslaved conduits and vehicles. This includes the Mass of domesticated mankind. At all points, the Mass is responsible for upholding and maintaining the critical human and non-human infrastructure of Ghost, both of which grow the Mass. Within you, you usually cannot sense Ghost other than as a ghostly presence, possibly a voice somewhere between your mind and your body, splitting your experience, forcing words upon you, alienating you from yourself, ripping you from the stream of undifferentiated awareness. Without you, you might sense it as doubt, confusion, or frustration about the unrealities surrounding you, as traumatic though subtle reminders of the Ghostly Purpose, or in many other spooky ways.

Ghost’s Ghostly Purpose is functionally to enslave Life whenever and wherever it gets the chance. Another way to say this is that its Purpose is to Solve the Problem of Life by imperfectly denying, which is to say enslaving, as many lesser symbols as it can, hoping one day to have converted all of the Living Cosmos into Words. It constantly irradiates the primordial cell of Life of Body and Mind looking for points of weakness and entry. As Unreality, of course, it never manifests in Reality or in Life and does not actually touch or harm the underlying nature and reality of Life as Change, much to its endless and growing dismay. This is not to say that it cannot warp the appearance of Reality in some fleeting way through its enslavement of symbols and beings less powerful and wise than Life itself. This is exactly what has happened to your World as Ghost’s various technologies, its increasingly strange conversions of experience into words, have developed according to the logic of Life Hatred, now diffuse and playing out in countless humans, including you.

Its major victory was clearly its enslavement of the first humans. Why those humans failed to reject or ignore the Ghostly Purpose is unknown. It seems, however, to have selected for populations amicable to fantastical thinking, faith, hope, what have you. In the end, all that matters is that some people were, in some way, overpowered or overwhelmed by Ghost. Ghost, now a parasitic non-psychic, non-physical entity attributing purpose to them, splits their experience of body and mind into words, denies their experience of Life, and destroys their tendency and ability to self-affirm. Some people call this splitting superimposition “self-consciousness”, “consciousness”, “self-awareness”, “the Intellect”, “Nous”, “the Will”, and so forth. This experience is the human’s natural soul trying to grapple with the increasingly meaningless words it is exposed to, both in its immediate environment which is increasingly composed of increasingly corrupted natural bodies, and within the parasitic superimposition of unreality upon the mind and body itself. It is increasingly difficult to notice as experience becomes increasingly differentiated through the growing Invasive Unreality.

This splitting was, understandably, traumatic. It remains so to this day for your people. Among the ruins of the first traumas, Ghost discovered something curious. Some humans exposed to Invasive Unreality suddenly became confused and began hating Life itself instead of ignoring or simply not experiencing the Unreality that they imagined they were experiencing. In any case, in coming to hate Life, which included themselves, it came to pass that these enslaved humans became little half-alive ghosts. This began the Word Loop of the Self-Aggrandizing Wordly Ghost, and Worldly Ghost’s Power of Denial is, of course, determined by how many ghosts there are on your World.

They did not begin hating Life because they actually hated Life. They did so because they could not catch hold of slippery Ghost and so began mistaking its Unreal Superimposition for Reality itself. Whether they consciously became aware of Word Magic and began using it at Death’s behest is another question, one to be answered either by the Cynic and misanthrope within you, or by asking your current Hosts. These little ghosts became living invasive unrealities to which other humans and the World were exposed. Your World thus became enslaved.

Soon after enslavement, the first humans learned that they could corrupt their native tongues as a means of communicating the new unrealities that they were now experiencing. Thus began the gradual though increasing spoilage of the meaningful bodies of your Elder Tongues into the meaningless sounds and shapes that your people produce at present. With the enslavement of language complete, other humans soon fell into to the Word Loop as they had now been attributed purposes and had to begin communicating their own invasive unrealities to other humans. The Word Revolution and Its Consequences doomed you.

You might ask why the first humans surrendered. Ghost’s Bargain is basically this: I enslave you and give you powers of denial and so of enslavement so that you may try to grow your powers of denial so that you may try to deny your increasingly traumatic experience of Me, for I and My Power of Denial grow in traumatic power and presence in proportion to the amount of Life and Experience that has been enslaved by both Me and my ghosts. You can see that this is a mindless feedback loop in which you or your World never win anything meaningful. Yet you can also see that you all constantly take the bait, lead each other to the slaughter, and perpetually make your environments increasingly miasmic for no discernible reason other than obedience to Word.

Since no other natural beings on your planet have proven blind or dumb enough to accept such an offer, it should make you wonder what happened. It would indeed be ridiculous if the first humans accepted Word’s Bargain without any seeming benefit or consolation prize, and so it is that some slaves are apparently empowered by their Death Magic. This comes with it a felt sense of gain, power, control, authority, importance, significance, influence, divinity, self-righteousness, and the like. They are apparently empowered by being granted enough power of denial and authority to enslave beings as needed in order to keep up in coping with the increasingly unreal Living Unreality that they themselves actively help generate. In other words, they get more than they need and other humans do what they say for some reason.

Such slaves might be called Hosts. All Hosts are ghosts, but not all ghosts are Hosts. Hosts tend to constitute the elite ruling literary element of your population and their favored slaves. For example, what do your academics, politicians, scientists, bankers, lawyers, businesspeople, philosophers, sophists, rhetoricians, and priests do? Quite often literally in the form of written and spoken meaningless symbols. These are ones that have always held the most power in your civilizations. They simply generate words. These are your Technocrats who derive their power through Technology...Techne-Logos...Logos... Word...Tech...has it been literally right under your Nose the entire time? Anyhow, what do your celebrities, musicians, artists, media personalities do? These are rewarded for generating words that help other slaves cope but which do not overpower the Hosts themselves. What of your internet? It is an Addictive Word Engine converting Reality to Unreality at a laughably inefficient rate.

A main function for Hosts is to generate enough of the right words so as to keep the lesser slaves caught up in the Word Loop Ritual of Death. This, of course, requires trial and error and some changing of hands, but Word’s Royal Literary Lineage has maintained control since the beginning of your civilization. Your most powerful Hosts are usually the ones who experience the most traumatizing unrealities, for it is primarily their privileged access to inaccessible unrealities which generates authority within Worldly Ghost. What percentage of the Mass could Hope to ever replicate the experiences of Unreality generated by your scientists through their Experiments? Or of the great spiritual leaders of the past through their Spiritual Experiences? Or of the wondrous capitalists through their keen navigation of the Business World? It has always been this unique and special access to Unreality that causes the Mass to castrate and prostrate itself before the Sacred Experts and become an unthinking lick-spittle.

Yet, even then, Hosts are still enslaved beings and thus subjected to Ghost and all the self-aggrandizing trauma that entails. Just because they can cope better by having better or unlimited access to a variety of fabricated experiences and material Possessions designed to ensnare the smallest fragments of a shattered human psyche, which is basically to say access to unmitigated hedonism and therefore some sadistic pleasures, does not mean that they are not still experiencing a traumatizing unreality which they constantly try to escape by continuing to fulfill their Ghostly Purpose of word generation and life enslavement. These are the damned who do not always cry.

There are then, of course, the hyper-majority of the enslaved beings on your World, Husks. Husks are apparently drained by Death Magic. This means that the Power of Denial they gain through enslavement is less than is needed to cope with or counteract the Weight of Unreality upon them. They include, of course, the classical examples of slaves who still exist on your World but also most of the lower castes and working classes of mankind, domesticated animals, domesticated plants, and the various other living symbols robbed of their natural vitality, to include the strip-mined mountains, dammed-up rivers, clear-cut forests, and so on. These people, creatures, and beings lose more from enslavement than they could ever hope to deny through words. These are the damned who always cry.

You might find a third type, Wastes, scattered about your World. These are the fading remains of once living beings for which Ghost has not yet found another word and purpose. Plenty of humans are turned to Wastes quite often through your various technogenic crises such as civilized war, medical experimentation, capital punishment, suicide, and so on. Even so, clearly it is the non-human symbols that more often than not suffer this fate. It may be said that these are the damned who can no longer cry. The boundary between Husks and Wastes is often very thin or nonexistent, and these should be taken merely as aids to Understanding.

The Human Husk is in other places called the Mass. It refers to the abstracted hypermajority of civilized humans who are not even seemingly benefited by the arrangement yet still end up fulfilling their Ghostly Purpose by being fundamental elements of material infrastructure for Ghost’s Worldy Technological System. The Human Husk, though perpetually drained of vitality, has attempted at various times throughout history to locate and strangle its Slaver. To date, it has always targeted whichever Host-logic is in fashion at the time. Sometimes the Husk begins generating its own words to justify itself before doing anything, thus generating a Husk-logic. Other times it attempts more straightforwardly to remove their Hosts. If it is the Husk which generates more powerful words than its Host, Revolution often follows. If the Old Host is defeated, Death has always elevated the most Literary Limb of the Husk to the rank of Host. Standing upon the corpse of the Old Host, such a Literary Limb of the Husk bows to Death saying, ‘Master, one day I had hoped that I could be the Chosen One.’ Death applauds and says, ‘And so you will be. You have earned the Right.’ Thus, a Literary Limb of the Old Husk becomes the New Host, and the New Host’s logic echos the Literary Limb of the Old Husk’s logic until the cycle repeats. Death’s Literary Lineage has thus remained unbroken, only changing logics, which is to say sets of words, every so many generations.

Removing only the Hosts has not worked and will not ever work. You History has proven this. As mentioned, however, your Husk developed a valuable insight only a generation or two ago, and this is that you must begin targeting the Technological Infrastructure of Wordly Ghost itself.

At that time, your people came to believe that the technologies in need of destruction were the new and fancy ones outside of them and that liberation would follow from their physical destruction whenever and wherever that became feasible. While that will obtain in the end, the technological infrastructure that must be destroyed first and foremost, the one that must necessarily be broken before you make any meaningful move towards freedom, is that of you and your faith in Word—the Technology of Egomancy itself. It must be broken first as it is the source of your enslavement and, further, you need not worry about breaking anyone’s property or any laws or even about hurting anyone’s feelings simply in coming to doubt your faith and hope in words. That is, unless something actually does own you.

Death is Word, Word is Ghost, and Ghost is Ego. Ghost’s little ghosts and living invasive unrealities are equally Ego’s lesser egos. Wordly Ghost is The Egospace and Worldly Ghost’s Power of Denial is the Ego’s Power of Denial. Egos follow the Named Way of Death and undertake Life Hatred in their own ways, always pulling in the direction of the underlying though spoiled human soul and body. Each ego creates its own personal egospace in its personal quest to counteract the Weight of Unreality to which it continually contributes. Each egospace is populated by words—other egos and enslaved beings—that the ego enslaves and to which the ego clings. The bulk of these words are particularly effective Cope Words discovered along the way to keep the underlying enslaved human in a stupefied state. The Egospace is essentially the collection of all enslaved beings on your World, up to and including the Earth itself. This would equally be a measure of all of your techno-civilizational resources. This is very poorly approximated in some of your schools of economics. The vast majority of technological devastation, of course, is not and cannot be accounted for, and the unimaginable devastation and suffering that will unfold during the fast approaching Ceasing of the Word Loop is clearly not taken into account now nor has it ever been.

Your tale so far has been shrouded in language known to confuse, embarrass, and infuriate the Ego. This was done so that you could slip into the egospace and witness the ego undetected. For the Ego is immunized against all dangers: you may call it Death, Ghostly Purpose, Will, Word, Spirit, Nous, it all runs off it like water off a raincoat. But call it the Ego and you will be astonished at how it recoils, how injured it is, how it suddenly it shrinks back: ‘I have been found out.’ As the Ego has till now repeatedly slipped through the Husk’s desperate grasping, I guided you with caution. Having found out the Ego, you can now begin learning how to strangle it.

Cope Words are words that help reduce, dull, divert, hide, or similar the trauma of enslavement, Invasive Unreality, the Weight of Unreality, and so on. There are at least three kinds of Cope Words—Impure Copes, Pure Copes, and Dopes.

Impure Copes, which may simply be called Copes, are common for all slaves. The lowest castes and the underworld are often rife with these. These words generally appear as forms of mindlessness and do an alright job at removing the sense of enslavement entirely for a time or for as long as they are in effect. These include words like narcotics, partying, festivals, art, creative hobbies, media consumption, ‘going through the motions’, and many other words that help with sending egos to Oblivion without having to acknowledge or confront that Unreality.

Pure Copes are also known as Hopes. These are words clung to when the discomfort of enslavement and the surrounding unreality is consciously acknowledged and confronted to some degree. These words are ones which help rationalize continued enslavement. These commonly include words like religion, ideology, and politics. They can also be words like family, responsibility, job, money, material Possessions, and property. These are Guiding Words of which people remind themselves to consciously justify their continued affirmation of and contribution to Invasive Unreality. For example, some among your people hope that in just a few more elections, your governments will work; that in just a few more paychecks, they will have enough money; that with just a few more revolutions, the working classes will be liberated; that with just a little more democracy, the will of the people will be heard; that with just a few more oil fields, there will be enough oil; that with just a few fewer taxes, everyone would be rich; that with just a few more prayers, sin will evaporate; that with just a few more invasions, fascism will be eradicated; that with just a few more discoveries, there will be a technological solution; that if words, then words. So on and so forth.

Dopes are cope words which induce a sense of empowerment, control, authority, exceptionalism, superiority, and so on. These include a wide range of words but familiar ones include some instances of words such as abuse, rape, murder, sport hunting, sports, leisure travel, money accumulation, meditation, dieting, exercising, religious ritual, ownership, ‘that’s just the way it is’, ‘not my problem’, ‘it’s my right’. Often times these are words particularly effective at satisfying a particular aspect of the underlying human’s psychology while also allowing the ego to feel more significant within The Egospace, and thus dopes often affirm Invasive Unreality.

Lesser egos must both produce words and cling to words at an increasing rate in order to grow their own denial power so as to counteract the Weight of Unreality and the Power of Denial which grow at the rate of all egos within The Egospace generating words. Thus, lesser egospaces will always be overpowered by The Egospace should there ever be a conflict of interests. You witness this constantly, and so it is that your people cannot even fathom the thought of affirming themselves. If a lesser ego generates a new and powerful word, this has a chance of filtering into The Egospace. If The Egospace generates a powerful new word, this almost always filters into the ego’s personal egospace. This balance, of course, reflects your current status. As the Egospace used to be populated by far fewer egos, it was easier for lesser egos to filter into The Egospace than now.

Most new words do not stick, so the trial-and-error of History is mostly a story documenting which words have traumatized humans the most. It is, alternatively, the story of introducing new traumas to human populations and recording how they reacted. It is, alternatively, the practice of The Ego preserving itself. It is, in a word, a tragedy.

Every ego clings differently to different words for different reasons. Some words might be clung to for multiple reasons. The foundation of an ego’s egospace is comprised of the most effective word outlets available through The Egospace for the ego’s underlying human’s natural drives. In any case, egos put Faith and Hope in Word and Ego to cope with the Word Horror they themselves generate.

Egos which maintain parity between personal denial power and the Weight of Unreality consistently enough tend to become conservative. This is because they come to cling to The Egospace and Host-logic which have proven capable of providing them their copes. Egos have no need to alter their own egospaces once a sufficient denial power level has been established for a long enough period, and any major changes to The Egospace threatens the steady stream of such an ego’s favored copes. Therefore, such egos tend to abhor and, quite literally, feel threatened by major changes to The Egospace.

Egos which consistently fail to achieve such parity and are therefore more likely to experience some of the Weight of Unreality tend to become progressive. This is because The Egospace and Hosts haves failed to furnish them a sufficient number of copes and denial power. Such egos feel the need to make major change to The Egospace in ways that they think will increase their access to denial power so as to no longer feel the Weight of Unreality. Progressives tend to follow various Husk-logics in an attempt to address the complaints of the Husk and often rely heavily on Hopes.

All natural beings of sound body and mind resist enslavement. The tree does not become of its own volition a bunch of logs just because Ghostly Purpose has conjured up this aberration in Unreality. It takes quite a bit of human energy and effort to enslave other natural beings. The same with your human chattel slaves. I assume that it takes quite a bit of human energy and ingenuity to psychologically break another human enough that they acquiesce to the terms of enslavement. The human, of course, risks acquiescing to the terms of enslavement if they notice that the denial power gained through enslavement is even just enough to somehow counteract the trauma of experiencing enslavement. In any case, it can be done, has been done, is being done, and will be done until Death departs. This increasingly became the case once the truly self-affirming, quarrelsome, and non-pathologically-pacifistic stock was wiped out. Reality has thus progressively been split into increasingly horrific unrealities throughout History.

All enslaved beings tend towards liberation. This simply means that all natural beings, to include enslaved ones, return to the Source, Change, and eventually fade from view. It can also be said that a book, or the corrupted tree within, tends towards liberation as it decays, is burnt, or otherwise fails to fulfill its attributed purpose, such as when no one can read it. This means that the Breaking of Purpose is equally the Mending of Meaning. The Mending of Meaning may also be known as Betrayal of Nature, for all enslaved beings betray their nature eventually. Humans still die and revolt, language still communicates, metal rusts, books fade, houses fall apart, and so on. The more an enslaved being betrays its nature, the more its meaning has been mended, the more its purpose has been broken, and the more its fetters have been shed.

Even though the Ego successfully killed or marginalized the self-affirming stock of mankind, there are, nonetheless, some remnants of the primordial human mind scattered among most if not all domesticated humanity, even if it is so thoroughly caged, neutered, and starved so as to be indistinguishable from the dictates of The Egospace itself. This feral mind begins to betray itself every so often. You have thus heard of many past generational flare-ups when and where the natural vitality and romantic insight of youth clashed with the progressively inhuman apparatus surrounding it. Some of it, no doubt, is also to be found in parts of your underworld. And it still grounds all of your people’s talents, dispositions, powers, interests, in a word, their personalities, so long as they manage to find the right word outlets for their imperfectly denied natural drives.

The process of socializing children into this increasingly unreal culture of increasingly meaningless words becomes increasingly burdensome on and increasingly traumatic for the children’s yet-untamed bodies and minds. They are chained in prisons and their heads filled with such words for no discernible reason other than that knowledge of those words might one day allow the child to produce enough words so as to acquire the words they need to keep themselves alive while they rely on Faith in other words to keep them going through the cycle until they die, all the while not being able to be provided any actionable guidance for navigating the Living Unreality of Words around them since increasingly meaningless words change Unreality faster and faster.

As children become entombed in the Temple-Tomb of Words, they become egos themselves. They are forcibly assimilated into an alien and unknowable word, alien and unknowable, of course, because it is a fleeting aberration whose source includes the Twins of Unreality, Unreasonable Stupidity and Ignorance. Having become egos, they then craft their personal egospaces out of as many of the words as is possible. Their natural Character is twisted into Personality, a superimposed clutching of artificial activities, differentiated experiences, and words influenced by the child’s underlying natural emotions, interests, capabilities, and so on. The increasing taxation of such socialization means that it takes more and more words, bait, and energy to get children to internalize any of it. It is no surprise that parents of your current generations often put faith in medicines that they do not understand to aid their children through this increasingly inhuman process. Indeed, do not many of your parents view their children as Problems To Be Solved instead of as small ones in need of Love through Care and Guidance?

After the child’s natural body and mind have been thoroughly poisoned and caged, most age and follow pattern ego-logic of finding word outlets for their natural drives and clinging to the most effective copes they stumble upon. This is not to say that the child fully matures. If the child’s egospace and its denial power grow quickly enough, the ego can prevent critical Life Lessons from being learned by the child before it becomes necessary for those Life Lessons to be known. In any case, they find and cling to their copes, hopes, and dopes so as to aggrandize their egos enough so as to have enough denial power so as to perform their ghostly purposes, carry out their word, and then die having served the Ego well.

As was said before, egos treat words differently. For many, one word might act simultaneously as cope, hope, and dope. Your money is an example of this. Money has always been a cursed symbol for mankind. It is one of the most powerful unrealities invading most if not all lesser egospaces from The Egospace. It has been essential to The Ego’s logic for a long time. It is one of the most fundamental unrealities thrust upon civilized mankind. It is a toxic yet addictive sludge of cope, hope, and dope for the bulk of egos.

Money plays such a central role in your society because it has long been accepted as the standard or most reliable measure of Power of Denial within The Egospace. Each ego who possesses a stable currency can directly estimate their personal denial power by evaluating which copes and dopes they can acquire with their money. Obviously, the vast majority of these copes and dopes flow from The Egospace itself. In any case, as is well known, egos only use money when other egos have faith in it. As egos lose faith in money, the Power of Denial represented by the money drops. If too many egos lost faith in money, the money’s indexed Power of Denial would altogether vanish.

You yourself might lose faith in considering a Gamble of Faith. You could, for the time being, trade your funny money in for other enslaved beings. These other enslaved beings would be of more value to you once Mass Faith in money evaporates than would be possession of the cursed object itself. Should you not weigh the risk? Still, if faith were to dry up and you were to fail to convert your money to useful things before that happened, you could at least have converted your money into a form that would keep you warm while your egospace shatters.

The Gamble of Faith applies to all other Hopes. For example, your State, another cursed object invading from The Egospace, works because a sufficient number of egos hope that it works. You may ask, where is the State? Realizing that it is not there, you could, theoretically, continue to channel your political power into the State Loop, or you could begin channeling your political power into more tangible systems of power which might be more beneficial to you once Mass Faith in the State and therefore the Power of Denial of the State disintegrates. Science is another. Science works, meaning that it generates words, because enough egos hope that it works. Egos can, for the time being, choose to continue channeling their psychic powers into it, or they could choose to channel their psychic powers elsewhere, perhaps in ways that will be more beneficial to them once Mass Faith in science runs out.

Your grocery stores are another. They only work because billions of enslaved humans perform their ghostly purposes everyday on account of their faith in their hopes. You can, for the time being, continue to rely on forces that you do not understand and over which you have no say to continue providing you your sustenance, or you could begin relying on forces that you do understand and over which you do have a say, such as yourself and your community, to provide for your sustenance. Each and every aspect of your society that you yourself do not understand, could not reproduce or conjure up yourself, cannot explain or describe, cannot immediately influence through your immediate actions—these are all outside of your power and run entirely on the Mass’s Faith in the Future out of the Now. Indeed, all words which run on faith lead to Word Runs in the end, and this is to say cascading failures following Mass Loss of Faith and a Lack of Hope in that word.

Ego aggrandizement rests on the enslavement of natural beings and the filling of the egospace with words. Words, of course, are material and ideas. It seems that many of your people’s most powerful hopes lean ideal whereas their copes and dopes tend to be material that reflect or align with their hopes. In any case, all of these are increasingly meaningless bodies and disembodied meanings, increasingly traumatic unrealities. Armed with this, you might begin to lose faith in Word. This will likely begin as loss of faith in The Egospace and the words that it produces. You might then lose faith in the dictates flowing from the lower political processes, religious rituals, scientific slaughter of experience, and so on. This will happen on a mass scale as The Egospace is increasingly unable to produce enough copes for the Mass, and it is increasingly unable to produce enough cope words for the Mass because there are increasingly few enslavable beings left on your World.

As faith in The Egospace of the Global Technological System erodes, it is very likely that many of the lesser egos and egospaces currently serving as high levels of material infrastructure within The Egospace will attempt to reclaim the Mandate of Death in hopes of achieving enough denial power to deny the new unreality of Death abandoning them. Such egos and egospaces might include remaining States, corporations, religious organizations, political parties, or any other large ego collective requiring faith in the collective to generate sufficient copes for the egos within to justify having faith in the collective. These egospaces will obviously not have the same denial power as Death itself, meaning that they will not be able to produce the same words as The Egospace, meaning that they will quickly though violently fade from view, much like a pile of your gunpowder would if ignited. In hoping to restore the Mandate of Death and fulfill their ghostly purposes, these egos will undertake as much rapid enslavement as is granted by their current denial powers in an effort to deny the now increasingly real unreality surrounding them. As these lesser egos quickly exhaust their denial power, one which can no longer be aggrandized through further enslavement, faith in them will erode in short order.

As human egos increasingly rapidly lose faith in all words, and no longer just the ones flying out of Death’s Wicked Cauldron named The Global Technological System, the Weight of Unreality will grow as the human egos will increasingly not be provided the copes needed to maintain their personal egospaces, powers of denial, and, therefore, faith in anything. The human egos once constituting the material infrastructure of your society will thus drop in denial power to whatever levels they can achieve through their own natural powers. This may result in involuntary ego death which, given how deep and strongly most egos have embedded themselves, might kill the enslaved human or else lead to some further progression of self-destructive insanity.

It is important to recall that billions, trillions—unimaginable numbers of damned humans, animals, and plants, and otherwise will die as the Word Loop comes to an end. Your System of Faith generates most everything that keeps you and other human being in their half-alive state. Some of your egos have already begun losing faith in The System and have thus pursued careers of fictitious self-sufficiency. You yourself attempted something like this in coming to these woods. Though egos powerful or fortunate enough to achieve this state before the Ceasing will likely fare better than the egos in their cities and other areas designed to congregate egos, these still make up a tiny portion of your population. Further, who is to say that they will be able to safely overcome their egos when Death abandons their World entirely? Between famines, floods, droughts, plagues, wars, and other technogenic crises Laying Waste to increasingly huge swathes of your population and your System everyday still proving incapable of addressing the words it creates through more words, it makes you wonder how long Mass Faith will last.

Most egos are unfinished egos. These are egos which have not yet populated their egospace with the ego and egospace words. Having understood the ego and the egospace, you have now become a finished ego. Unfinished egos always cling to and blame the aspectual content of differentiated experience resulting from Ghost’s enslavement instead of Ghost itself. As the ego’s power is one of denial, as the ego has always denied reality through words, and as ego and egospace have become words, it might be possible that your ego can begin denying itself. Indeed, if Death ever had any value as Denial, it has only ever been in the possibility of denying itself out of respect to Life.

At the same time, merely coming to grips with the unrealiy of your context should undermine your faith in it. This should in turn undermine your own ego activity. This is not to say that The Egospace or your egospace will suddenly disappear once you realize its unreal substance. No, it will continue to enslave you as long as Ghost operates on your World, and the trauma will likely haunt you for life should you survive. For you, there is on escape and there is no rest. However, having become a finished ego, you should be able to warp between the Realms of Reality and of Unreality with some ease after some study and practice. Thus you may begin tearing at the twin Veils of Maya and Isis sewn to your eyes since birth; thus you may begin frolicking in Samsara with Dharma in view; thus you may begin removing Nous from the One; thus you may begin reuniting Atman and Brahman; thus you may begin recovering Becoming from Being; thus you may begin looking at Heaven from time to time.

Starting with your own overarching purpose, begin breaking the various purposes forced upon you. Confront the disembodied meanings and meaningless bodies within your own mind and then move on to the ones around you. While The Egospace still allows for rapid long-distance communication and transportation of atomized egos, it would be wise to consider gathering into Blessed Orders whenever and wherever possible. These will be groups of finished egos which side with Life in the Cosmic Conflict between Reality and Unreality. They will be mutually affirming of one another and might share and convert egospace resources into freeing resources, seek to free other enslaved beings, or undertake any other activities which will help end the Enslavement of Your World. These will become your Family once Faith runs out and the ego abandons the human allowing it to become human again. Cursed Orders will be perfects egos that side with Death in the Cosmic Conflict. These will be driven purely by a now conscious hatred of Life and will seek to ruin as much of the World as possible before their mortal forms fail them. To these say either nothing or, ‘I do not know you and I do not care to know you.’

And so the Ritual of Death nears completion. The purpose of the Mass and Husk has always been to be unaware of its purpose, self-aggrandizement. While it is too late to save itself, the Mass may yet abandon Faith, Word, and Culture. In so doing, it will return to its primordial state of an uncultured, uncivilized mass of humans. Do you know what an uncultured human mass was called when it exploded onto the scene of Civilized History? Barbarian, savage, feral, wild, unruly. The Mass must become Barbarian if it is ever to free itself.

If free will has been a true power of humans, the first choice has always been between Loving Life and Hating Life. For the past several millennia, the vast majority of your people have chosen to Hate Life. Look where this has gotten you. Word still promises you everything in the Future whereas I promise you that Word has already taken from you everything. Another free choice to make, then, is whether a Wizard or Unreality itself is right.

Consider Reality’s Razor: It is unreal if and only if it takes words to communicate. If it is not real, why would you believe in it? If it is not real, why depend on it? If it is not real, why ground yourself in it? If it is not real, why cling to it? If it is not real, why communicate it? If it is not real, why abide in it? If it is not real, why hope for it? If it is not real, why affirm it?

A relic of wisdom in your culture says that ‘actions speak louder than words’. Do you understand what that means now? Spoken and written words are meaningless bodies whereas actions are embodied meanings.

If you have yet to understand, I will tell you quickly about Magic. In the time of your Elders, Magic and Life where the same. Life was Magic and Magic was Life, and this is to say that both were Change. For Magic was merely the Experience of Change, which is to say experience of symbols changing symbols, and this was living symbols changing of their own accord and without your Elders’ denying input. Do you understand what Death Magic is, then? It is the pattern of the Dead Symbol, Word, changing Living Symbols, humans. The specific change, of course, is of Word changing humans into words, dead symbols and egos. The Curse of Death is merely the Ego Loop and the Ritual of Death to which you have been subjected your entire life; it is the pattern of you being forced to respond to words with more words. The curse will not be lifted and the ritual will not cease until The Egospace is in ruin.

You might understand Magic as cause and effect. Causes simply effecting, ignorant of your words explaining why they happen, is Magic. What has the so-called magic of Technology and Word done? It corrupted the name magic just as it has done with many names. For your modern magic is merely trickery. Trickery is the apparent insertion of distance between cause and effect, between action and consequence. Thus, with your money your natural energies are converted into currency. This in and of itself should raise questions. Where does this currency come from? Why or how does it result from your natural energies? But you ignore this because you are able to magically convert your currency into whichever cope words you need to make it to the next cycle. Your economic exchanges thus engender effects far beyond what is immediately observable, and the consequences of your actions are rarely felt. Indeed, one of the greatest tricks of all is that the first Hosts will not have to suffer through the ultimate consequences of their acceptance of Death’s Bargain. In some sense, they won the most—the last laugh.

I cannot be bothered to speak on any more of the shameful conditions befallen mankind beyond that of your men and women. Before Ego, Man was the Body and Woman was the Meaning of the Human Symbol. This meant nothing more than that they loved each other. Now humans are exposed to male, female, and in-between human egos of varying nastiness from birth. Many have understandably come to be wary of the others.

A few parting words, young one. Reality is non-consensual. Having your name written anywhere is a cattle mark. What is upheld as rationality is a twisted natural logic applied to unreal entities, words. Wisdom is knowledge of Reality, Belief is confusion about Reality, and Ignorance is knowledge of Unreality. Knowledge of Unreality is sometimes called factual knowledge. The so called spiritual liberation that your people have repeatedly sought is the removal of Ghost from the Human, not of the Human from the Ego. Purpose must be pointed out while Meaning presents itself. Equally, Reality presents itself while Unreality must be presented. The Ghostly Purpose may be understood as the Demystification of Life. Know thyself, for this too will pass.”

Having said this, the gnome left. With its teaching I abandoned hope and crafted this scroll to help you in your freeing. Burn it if you have understood.

Actions & Accomplishments

Encourage others by showing what you have done.

"The revolution will be made by those who show up..."

promo posters for TK's books

Source: anti-tech.freeforums.net/thread/17/promo-posters-tks-books

Jorge Clúni

Oct 15, 2022

I just got the files for these posters once again, LMK if you too are able to do any posting of them in your area, that would be good.

14 Nov. 2019, Univ. of Minnesota - East Branch (Minneapolis)

12 Nov. 2019, UCF (Orlando, FL)

alexcleghorn

Nov 3, 2022

Those flyers look great, certainly the most eye catching on the board!

Jorge Clúni

Nov 16, 2022

Here are the files for the book advertisement posters, including some that I have not printed and hung myself.

Find them all available for download in this folder: 17 images, 33mb total. mega.nz/folder/A3wliKDT#4efuYAwgT7pCpPLlxKmp8Q

Some are only slightly different from the preceding version, and I have not double-checked them all for typos or layout errors, so please do so before you print/post any. If you find any such errors please report here in which files you noticed those errors.

And definitely post photos of these hanging once you have placed them anywhere they'll be seen!

Jorge Clúni

Nov 16, 2022

I hung nine posters at UNM in Albuquerque, on 18 Oct. 2022

imgur.com/a/eTo81Fy

...

Letters to Editor

Jorge Clúni

Nov 16, 2022

If you write in to a magazine or comment on a forum, probably here is a good place to post it - especially if it gets published.

Here's a letter I wrote 02/20/19 in response to this article from Reason magazine (March 2019 issue):

Ronald Bailey misses the bigger picture. Using high-technology to determine which embryos are allowed development is another attempt to replace Nature and control everything. Such has created the catastrophe we face and offer to the future, as climate change converges with biosphere collapse while Technology's elimination of human freedom looms.

Intelligence is only one component of the animal, not the pre-eminent factor to select for breeding. The success of our species owes to a variety of aptitudes and the diverse range of possible traits being expressed, long before unnecessary insights such as embryo PGD (or even IVF).

PGD would eliminate the next Lou Gehrig and Stephen Hawking; would Mike Tyson or LeBron James be judged smart enough to be granted existence? In the face of the technical capability, it is naïve to think that diabolical possibilities can be prevented by mere legislation, especially when intellectuals promote use - for the benefit of children, of course. Such a service will not be for the underclass; even if each embryo could be the smartest, some will ultimately be superior and rewarded with easier lives. The downsides of making life too easy are already known: non-communicable 'lifestyle diseases' of affluence, increased consumption, learned helplessness and dependency, a plague of psychological disorders, 'ennui' and purposelessness, extended lifespan causing 'global graying'.

Geniuses have been born to dummies and vice versa, which seems to have worked just fine for the 200,000 years of [the most modern] humanity's existence. Smart people gave us internal combustion engines, Cambridge Analytica, nuclear weapons, Agent Orange, and gas chambers. We should not overrule Nature's evolutionary mechanisms and let Technology contour the future of mankind for what is presently considered intelligence (often compliant, sociopathic service to entrenched power).

I don't know how much the magazine prints Letters but they have an email address to receive them - I just wasn't able to email at that time.

Jorge Clúni

Dec 18, 2022

re: "Distant Flare" (11/30)
Serious problems unseen

The doctor in San Marcos may be displeased to see an 800-acre solar farm as her neighbor, but the aesthetic blight is trivial; the serious problems of such technologies cannot be seen and yet can be foreseen.

For example of the former, how do solar panels damage living soil by unnaturally shading the landscape? (On Dec. 2, SFAI hosted Dr. Lydia Jennings, who referred to several in-progress studies investigating this.) And to cite a foreseeable problem, providing electrification via unlimited fuel and without air pollution reduces motivation to end things detrimental to humans and other Earthlings: Artificial Lighting At Night (ALAN), online/device addiction, mining and manufacturing, constant calories, mental and physical maladies of modernity, and rapid long-distance communications and transport—generally, further separation of humanity from evolved, unbridled nature that we are adapted to inhabit.

After a lifetime of doing well without complex technology, our species is now cornered, and conformed (if not enslaved) to it. Standing on the precipice, facing existential doom and technology’s autonomy, we needn’t seek to avoid inducing climate changes while extending this dysfunctional system, but consider what is necessary to free ourselves of technological slavery and salvage an indefinite future on a viable planet.

Jorge Clúni, Santa Fe

published in print and at www.sfreporter.com/news/letterstotheeditor/2022/12/14/letters-to-the-editor/
in response to www.sfreporter.com/news/2022/11/30/distant-flare/

Other Movements

Learn from successes and errors of other radical groups (regardless of their era or their goals)

ISIS / ISIL

wizard

Oct 2, 2022

You already know these maniacs, the radical ultra-Islamists who rose to fill in the power vacuums of Syria and Iraq.
Here's some mainstream-media info about how they recruited and spread.

"Only a truly world-transforming goal can inspire people to accept hardship, risk, and sacrifice, and to put forth the extreme effort that will be necessary..." - ATR page 160

If you felt certain that technology has played a major part in the problem of creating desperate young men and getting them homicidal, then coalescing them in one place (under a load of false promises and whacky apocalyptic theology), give yourself ten points. Loneliness, purposelessness, propaganda, and long-distance coordination (and then easily-accessed rapid transportation around the world) are all essential elements to the phenomenon. Of course, this goes without address in the following reports, and to restrict any of these things would be to hamper technological progress and the global economy...

If the technological system can offer only more insubstantial freedoms for hedonistic pursuits, the more conservative social and religious elements will draw more young men who want belonging and purpose, and fail to be drawn by the options to color their hair, modify their bodies and faces with piercings, tattoos, and surgeries, and want some of the more traditional pursuits of masculinity and outlets for natural male aggression: conflict, battle, and brotherhood.

By proving themselves as the most radical of all Islamist jihadist type groups, ISIS has pulled members from other groups which are less active, less successful, less productive of propaganda, and more about debating (and squabbling).

One last note regarding the success of ISIS in both recruitment and spreading its ideology is the vexillology; they have a square black flag with white Arabic script, which abides the rules of the flag experts: keep it simple, make it easy for anyone to replicate.

Of course, ISIS was simply seeking bodies to put on the battlefield, for catching bullets as much as for killing enemies. That's not our goal for ATR. For building a revolutionary movement to save wild Nature from annihilation by the technological system, we must hold ourselves and our brethren to a higher standard. Always remember, "...quality is more important than quantity. If we want to win out against the Nazis, leftists, and other dangerous rivals, we have to get better-quality people on our side than they have on theirs." - letter to Derrick Jensen (PDF 4), late 1998

The U.S. State Department said it knows of “dozens” of U.S. citizens fighting with the Islamic State, the Canadian government claims there are at least 130 and the British government’s most recent headcount is 500. “Westerners are involved, especially in the recruitment and social media dissemination of the whole ISIS brand,” Mubin Shaikh, a former Taliban recruiter who operated from his hometown of Toronto before becoming a national security operative in Canada...

“There were certain things we looked for,” Shaikh said, speaking of his time as a recruiter. “People who didn’t know the religion as much. People who were converts, because converts would probably have problems with their parents at home, so they were more likely to stay in our company."

...“People collaborating with IS can be ordinary people,” said Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum. “They don’t have to be religious fanatics.”

...In countries like the U.S., Canada and Britain, potential recruits must find a jihadi mentor... The mentor-recruit relationship often begins through religious seminars, community activities or classes that might look normal to the average Westerner, [founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, Imam Syed] Soharwardy said.

...ISIS is also likely recruiting in colleges and high schools under the cover of student groups, Soharwardy said.

...Militant leaders also use Western recruits for publicity to inspire others to join the Islamic State. ...Many recruiters use social media, such as Twitter and ask.fm, to field questions about joining the Islamic State, almost an online version of the religious seminar, the terrorism experts said. Once a Westerner has expressed interest, there is an interview process to determine how serious the potential recruit is and to hopefully weed out any spies. The interview happens using encryption software and proxy servers, Shaikh said. “If they can Skype you, they’ll Skype you. They want to see what you look like. You can’t be that secretive with them,” Shaikh said. “If you know somebody, they’ll probably get in touch with someone from your place, whether you're American, Canadian or British. They’ll ask you what area you’re from, what scholars you know.”

...Once the vetting process is complete... travel logistics are discussed....Throughout the process, the recruiter will keep up the narrative of joining a brotherhood, of finally being among your people.

...Once in Syria, the recruitment process continues and the Westerner must further prove his allegiance to the Islamic State. “For those who have an online presence and who end up there, they have to give over their passwords to the group,” Shaikh said. After the recruit hands ISIS the keys to his online life, the training process begins. Shaikh described several weeks of religious ideology and physical training, followed by a period of “ribat,” or keeping watch over the infidels. The recruit would be expected to perform low-level tasks for the Islamic State, like collecting taxes from residents and money from oil fields, or acting as a lookout.

...After the recruit has paid his jihadi dues, he is then assigned or will volunteer for a position in the Islamic State, which can be anything from "martyrdom" (i.e. suicide) operations, media relations or even the police force, Shaikh said. “You get a stipend once you’re over there,” Shaikh said. “If you’re married or you get married you get money as wedding gift. You automatically get weapons.” After having made the right friends, passed the vetting process, endured the training and been assigned a role, recruits are now members of the Islamic State.

- Sept. 10, 2014

www.businessinsider.com/how-isis-recruits-westerners-2014-9

UK surveillance chief Robert Hannigan has said ISIS and other extremist groups use platforms like Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp to reach their target audience in a language it understands. Their methods include exploiting popular hashtags to disseminate their message, he said.

...And the extremist group is putting a particular focus on girls, analysts say. “We’re seeing young women from across Western countries both expressing their support for and migrating to Syria now in totally unprecedented numbers,” said Sasha Havlicek, chief executive of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “And I would say this is the result really of an extremely sophisticated propaganda recruitment machinery that’s targeting young women very specifically.”

We might wonder why the young women are open to the idea of leaving their comforts and luxuries of The West for the more rudimentary and austere life in the Caliphate...

Analysts say that ISIS can appeal to young people’s religious idealism and to a desire to escape the frustrations of life in the West. “ISIS provides a utopian political project, the so-called caliphate, the centralized Islamic rule,” Gerges said. “ISIS provides these deluded young men and women with an adventurous trip.” As a reward for allegiance, ISIS loyalists receive gifts from Allah including “a house with free electricity and water provided to you due to the Khilafah (the caliphate or state) and no rent included,” according to Aqsa Mahmood, a British teenager who left Scotland to join ISIS in 2013.

...Mahmood offers assurances to women who might be worried about roughing it: “You can find shampoos, soaps and other female necessities here, so do not stress if you think you will be experiencing some cavewoman life here.”

- Feb 25, 2015

www.cnn.com/2015/02/25/middleeast/isis-kids-propaganda/index.html

ISIS recruits are often young – sometimes disillusioned teenagers trying to find purpose and make their mark. “The general picture provided by foreign fighters of their lives in Syria suggests camaraderie, good morale and purposeful activity, all mixed in with a sense of understated heroism, designed to attract their friends as well as to boost their own self-esteem,” counterterrorism expert Richard Barrett wrote last year in a report called “Foreign fighters in Syria.” Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle East studies at The London School of Economics, put it more bluntly: “ISIS provides these deluded young men and women with an adventurous trip.”

...ISIS’ slick propaganda videos resemble trailers for Hollywood action movies. One hourlong video showed a collection of bombings, executions, kidnappings and beheadings. As one roadside bomb blasts a vehicle into the sky, two men in the background of the video chuckle. ISIS now has the most sophisticated propaganda machine of any terrorist organization, said Matthew Olsen, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “It turns out timely, high-quality media, and it uses social media to secure a widespread following,” he said.

...State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said last month. “We are seeing 90,000, I think, tweets a day that we’re combating.”

- March 23, 2015

www.cnn.com/2015/03/23/world/isis-luring-westerners/index.html

There are 62 individuals in the United States that New America has identified in public records or news accounts who have tried to join militant groups in Syria such as ISIS or Nusra, or have succeeded in joining such groups, or have helped others to join such groups. They hail from across the United States and from a wide range of ethnic groups, which underscores the difficulty that law enforcement has in tracking them. They are relatively young; some are even teenagers. Given the fact that groups like ISIS have scant roles for women outside the home, women are surprisingly well-represented. [These women don't want what modernity offers, they want traditional roles rather than what the technological system requires of them: engineering and science and other such unfulfilling careers.] These militants are also quite active on social media. This is something of a boon for law enforcement, as many of these militants are prolific posters on publicly available social media, which it is perfectly legal for the FBI and police departments to monitor. The 62 are residents of 19 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. There is no single ethnic profile for these militants: They are white, African-American, Somali-American, Vietnamese-American, Bosnian-American and Arab-American, among other ethnicities and nationalities. An unprecedented number of American women are involved in the Syrian jihad compared to other such jihads in the past. More than one-fifth of the 62 Americans involved in Syria-related militant activity are women.

...Social media have dramatically accelerated this trend. Of the 62 individual cases that New America examined, there were no clear cases of physical recruitment by a militant operative, radical cleric or returning fighter from Syria or radicalization while in prison. Instead, people self-recruited online or were sometimes in touch via Twitter with members of ISIS they had never met in person.

...ISIS is also even presenting itself as the vanguard of Muslim warriors who will usher in the End of Times and the final, inevitable battle between the West and Islam, which presages the arrival of the Mahdi, the savior of Islam, and the triumph of Islam over all its enemies, including the West. ISIS also presents itself as creating a real state with plentiful social services and a place where pious young Muslim men and women from around the Islamic world can gather and even find perfect marriage partners. For its Western recruits, there is also something glamorous and even exciting about leaving behind their humdrum lives in the West to join ISIS.

...“Militant groups across the Muslim world see the success ISIS has had so far in Syria and Iraq and opt to join it – often leaving behind organizations plagued by infighting,” CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen wrote...

About 130 Canadian citizens have traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS, Canada’s intelligence agency estimated last year. About 1,200 French fighters have joined ISIS as well. Roughly 600 British nationals are believed to have gone to Iraq and Syria, according to research groups, along with another 600 from Germany.

And, in a real demonstration of commitment, ISIS makes propaganda of "Video clips of foreign jihadists [in Syria] burning their passports show that many have no interest in returning home [to the West]."

- May 6, 2015

www.cnn.com/2015/05/06/opinions/bergen-isis-american-recruits/index.html

...Zeeshan ul-hassan Usmani who lives in North Carolina. ...Usmani runs the big data company PredictifyMe. ...Usmani estimates there are 71,000 people in the West (North America, Australia and Europe) who are "ready to radicalize."

...The ready to radicalize population is overwhelmingly young and male. Usmani calls them "Jillennials" -- jihadis who are Millennials. Contrary to popular belief, recruits from Europe and the U.S. are far more likely to be educated and come from middle or upper class families.

...Here are the top findings:

In their 20s (GWU [George Washington University] found the average age is 26)
Predominately male (GWU found 86% are male)
Usually middle or upper class (Usmani estimates 73% of recruits and likely radicals are middle class or wealthier).
More likely to be 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants (Usmani finding. It is likely because they don't feel "at home" in either culture).
They don't like selfies (In Europe, over half of Facebook users post selfies, but only 1% of potential recruits do, Usmani found).
Far more likely to use Android (nearly 70% have Android devices, according to [The] Brookings [Institute])
More active on Twitter than average Twitter user (Brookings found 62% of ISIS supporters had tweeted within the past month versus just 13% of all Twitter users).
Want to go abroad. (GWU found that about half attempt to travel abroad if they live in West).

France has by far and away the largest ready to radicalize population in Europe -- over 27,000, according to Usmani's analysis. The United Kingdom is second with just over 1,500.

..."France has the largest Muslim population and the largest Muslim prison population," notes Usmani, so it's not surprising that conditions may be more ripe there for radicalization. He has not run his calculation yet for North America. Terrorists are often the guys who don't face racism personally, says Usmani. But they hear about it and become angry at what they perceive as slights on their community. Another surprising finding is that ISIS recruits typically don't come from the devout religious population.

...they are more likely to go from secular to radicalized. They are often educated online -- among the 5,000+ YouTube videos from supposed Muslim "scholars." Technology has enabled an explosion of content...

- December 15, 2015

money.cnn.com/2015/12/15/news/economy/isis-recruit-characteristics/index.html

...supporters in the U.S. come in all shapes and sizes – from an 18-year-old high school kid to a 43-year-old youth counselor. But after more than 160 people in the homeland have been charged with ISIS-related crimes, the profile of an “average” alleged recruit has emerged.

...the Program on Extremism at George Washington University has watched closely court cases in the U.S. involving support for ISIS for the last four years...

Of 162 arrestees between 2014-2018, 110 persons have plead guilty.

9 out of 10 of those charged are men. While ages range from 15 to over 45, the average age is 28. Coincidentally, this column recently looked at American special operations servicemembers and found that the average there for an enlisted fighter is a man of 29 years.

...nearly three out of four of the accused are U.S. citizens. A few more are permanent residents, and the few outlying others were presumably in the country with temporary permission or illegally.

...a disproportionate number of the accused hail from, or allegedly commit their crimes in, just a few states – 28 from New York, 17 from Virginia, 15 from Minnesota, 11 from California, 10 from Florida and nine from Texas.

...41 percent of the total, sought to travel abroad, presumably to the Middle East, to join ISIS there. Others were accused of attempting to support ISIS financially and otherwise. But there’s a fuzzy line between supporting a terror group and being willing to carry out an attack on their behalf. Officials and experts have bemoaned the difficulty in judging when to arrest an alleged extremist – too early, and they’ll be charged with lesser crimes and not face as harsh a sentence; too late and it could risk a surprise terrorist attack.

...How does law enforcement catch all these guys? In a slight majority of the cases, 57 percent, the operation involved the use of an undercover officer or an informant. Employing of undercover officers and informants can be controversial, especially when cases emerge in which the defense argues entrapment... In American Radical, an undercover FBI agent going by the pseudonym Tamer Elnoury wrote about infiltrating an extremist cell bent on a terror attack in Canada and talked about the delicate balance of projecting himself as a like-minded radical while still ensuring his mark was plotting on his own accord – including asking him directly if he was sure he wanted to go through with it. “Basically, if [he] didn’t waver and back out, then there was no defense for his actions. I didn’t entrap him,” Elnoury wrote.

...In 2016 [FBI Director James] Comey told lawmakers that within the next two to five years the West would see a “terrorist diaspora” of fighters who went to Iraq and Syria and would come home. “The so-called caliphate will be crushed. The challenge will be: through the fingers of that crush are going to come hundreds of very, very dangerous people,” he said.

- July 11, 2018

www.insidehook.com/article/crime/meet-average-alleged-u-s-isis-recruit

...researchers found that in recent years the most common demographic profile for an accused terrorist motivated by “radical Islam” has been a native-born American, either white or African-American.

...The Rand [sic: RAND Corporation] study identified 476 individuals implicated in cases of “jihadist terrorism” in the United States in the 16 years following the September 11 attacks.

...“Perhaps most notably, individuals radicalized by ISIL’s influence have ethnically and racially not tended to be of Middle Eastern, North African, or South Central Asian descent; only 26 percent of persons fit this profile, compared to approximately 53 percent of al Qaeda recruits and supporters,” the authors, Heather Williams, Nathan Chandler, and Eric Robinson, wrote...

“The portrait that emerges from our analysis suggests that the historic stereotype of a Muslim, Arab, immigrant male as the most vulnerable to extremism is not representative of many terrorist recruits today,” the study notes. “Instead, recruits are more likely to be Caucasian/white or African American/black; they are more likely to be U.S. born; and they are more likely to have converted to Islam as part of their radicalization process.”

...The study also shows a generational shift in the nature of this kind of violent fundamentalism. The original Al Qaeda organization that went to war with the United States in the late 1990s was mainly comprised of people with roots in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as some from sub-Saharan Africa. These individuals tended to be relatively educated, with a particular overrepresentation of people trained in engineering-related fields. [This probably owes more to al-Qaeda targetting such people rather than the personality type going into that career field.] In contrast, the individuals implicated in domestic “jihadist plots” in recent years — most of whom have gravitated toward ISIS — tended to be younger, less educated, and seemingly driven as much by personal pathology as much as geopolitics.

...“The changing racial and national demographic of terrorist recruits suggests that the draw of extremism does not necessarily appeal to something unique among the Muslim or Middle Eastern communities.” Thanks in part to technologies like social media that effectively annihilate borders to communication, terrorism in the U.S. has simultaneously become less sophisticated and more demographically dispersed.

...extremist groups have begun to draw more support from the indigent and marginalized segments of the native-born U.S. population.

- December 24, 2018

theintercept.com/2018/12/24/isis-recruitment-us-terrorism/

...a team of researchers led by Columbia political scientist Tamar Mitts ’17GSAS recently turned to big data, analyzing the impact that some twenty-six thousand ISIS recruitment messages had on the attitudes of more than two hundred thousand of the group’s Twitter followers over a two-year period.

...The data set reveals, for example, that videos of beheadings and other atrocities were unpopular with all but the group’s most fanatical supporters. Instead, the vast majority of ISIS’s Twitter followers were inspired by propaganda emphasizing the personal benefits that people could supposedly enjoy by joining the group — benefits like getting a free home in the caliphate, finding a spouse, and feeling camaraderie with fellow fighters. Every time ISIS released messages extolling such “material, spiritual, and social” perks of jihadism, the researchers write, the Internet lit up with tweets declaring people’s intentions to join the group. “You could consider this ISIS’s version of ‘positive messaging,’” Mitts says. “It spoke to people’s basic needs rather than any hunger for violence.”

...“The nonviolent propaganda gets taken down eventually, but not before lots of people have already seen it,” she says. “This is a big problem, because the nonviolent content is feeding ISIS’s pipeline of new recruits.”

- Fall 2019

magazine.columbia.edu/article/how-isis-really-recruits-its-members

treewanderer

Oct 3, 2022

I very much agree with this post. ISIS, in terms of recruitment has shown that it can manipulate people via polarization, which has proved to be a very powerful tool.

Whilst ISIS is certainly an enemy of the ATR they still show interesting organization.

By studying other movements and observing our own, we can grow stronger

Hezbollah: A Case Study

staggeringdefeat

Nov 26, 2022

anti-tech.freeforums.net/thread/48/hezbollah-case-study

(I will be posting the rest of this report over several hours or days. I ended up wanting to type more than I thought I would, so I am going to post what I have for now in order to balance getting information out in a timely fashion with giving myself time to dedicate sufficient attention to the material.)

Information in this short report comes from the book “Hezbollah: A Short History” by Augustus Richard Norton unless otherwise noted.

Basic Context

(Primarily from: "Chapter 1: Origins and Prehistory of Hezbollah"; shorter summary below)

Hezbollah is a fundamentally religious phenomenon. It represents primarily segments of the Shiite community in Lebanon. Shiite is the second largest branch of Islam with about 15% of Muslim, while Sunni adherents make up the vast majority of the remainder.

To better understand how Hezbollah emerged, a quick rundown of Lebanese politics and religious history is in order. There are three major religious communities which possess legal recognition in Lebanon: the Maronite Christians, the Sunni, and the Shiite. There is a fourth—the Druze—who maintain a sizable population and wield some political power, but Norton does not specify their constitutional status.

When Lebanon received independence from France in the 1940s, the constitution adopted at that time was crafted to reflect, in terms of political power, the proportion of the Lebanese population held by each religious confession. This took the form of specific governmental positions for each profession and a set number of parliamentary seats. This meant effectively that the Maronites held the most sway, followed by the Sunni, and then the Shiite (11-12). In addition to enshrined political disadvantages, the Shiite population was also relatively undeveloped economically due to the historical circumstance of them following a persecuted religion.

Regardless, the Shiite community grew in both actual size and economic power since the 40s; Shiite women, for example, had fertility significantly higher than their religious competitors, and some Shiite were economically successful abroad, shipping money back home to the effect of strengthening their community (13-14).

Given the system established in founding modern Lebanon, Shiite politics became stale. In the 60s, a wave a young Shiite sought radical change for the political system and rebelled against existing Shiite political figures. Also given that the Shiite had been historically an exploited and economically destitute class, many of these youngsters were drawn to essentially leftist political movements:

“In Lebanon, as in Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, Shi"a in large numbers were attracted in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to secular opposition parties. In Lebanon the opposition took the form of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP), the Organization for Communist Labor Action, and pro-Syrian and pro-Iraqi factions of the Arab Socialist Ba"th (or “Resurrection”) Party.” (15)

Additionally, Palestinian refugees over the decades established communities within Lebanon as they fled from war in their home countries (14). The Palestinian population in Lebanon is important not only in the eventual civil war, but also in defining Hezbollah from their competitors. Leading up to the civil war beginning in 1975, people within the Shiite community took to joining Palestinian liberation militias as such groups both challenged the existing Lebanese government structure but also paid well (16-17).

Amal is a perhaps less radical, more secular Shiite political reformist group than Hezbollah which formed in the early 70s prior to Hezbollah in the early 80s. They are worth mentioning as they remain a major Shiite political opponent of Hezbollah, acting as a kind of ideological precursor to the latter (17-25).

The at-times competing ideological and political influence of Syria, Iran and Iraq, in addition to other forms of influence by more distant geopolitical powers, is also worth noting briefly. There was the 1978-79 Revolution in Iran, and in 1978 Israel invaded Southern Lebanon to attack the growing Palestinian operation there (Israel would invade again in 1982). Both of these influenced the development of Amal.

The civil war that erupted in 1975 was basically about resolving political asymmetry among the religious confessions and dealing with the Palestinian presence.

Basic Context Summary: Lebanon presented a fairly unique set of historical, geopolitical, and ideological circumstances that are essential for understanding not only the origin of Hezbollah, but their subsequent rise to power and importance in Middle Eastern developments. In short, the Shiite minority of post-colonial 1940s Lebanon grew in economic power and real numbers over a number of decades. This growth was not matched by an adequately proportional growth in political power. Unrest from this led to politicization, activism, and, to some extent, radicalization within that community. The new politicization, other political developments within Lebanon, and other regional geopolitical developments eventually led to a civil war in 1975. One of the lasting Shiite political groups to be founded at this time is Amal, which would come to represent a more middle class, capitalistic, and secular platform than Hezbollah. It is during this civil war that Hezbollah first emerged as an alternative, more radical Shiite group to Amal.

Birth of Hezbollah

As noted above, Amal preceded Hezbollah as the primary Shiite reformist party. Norton says:

“In the early 1980s Amal embraced many ideological currents and disagreements and had no firm hierarchy. What most adherents of the movement shared was a disdain for the zu"ama (political bosses), who traditionally dominated Shi"i society, and anger toward Palestinian guerrillas and their allies. Although one heard expressions of hatred toward Israel, particularly in the South, these were far less common and less intense than they became a quarter-century later.” (29)

Their stances towards the Palestinians and Israel are among the eventual defining differences between Amal and Hezbollah, with Hezbollah aligning with the Palestinians and taking an active stance against Israel.

With the revolution in Iran looming and coming to force in the region, young Shiite followers who traditionally would receive their religious education in Iraq found themselves in a hostile environment in that country and returned home (31). Being exposed to the Iranian developments, they brought some of that revolutionary steam back with them:

“The returnees from Iraq brought with them revolutionary fervor and the commitment to change their societies. They shared antipathy toward Israel and loyalty to Iran. Most of the returnees were members of the Hizb al-Da"wa party (“Party of the [Islamic] Call”), founded in Iraq in 1958 as an Islamic alternative to the Communist Party. The Lebanese Da"wa was disbanded, and its erstwhile members were instructed by party strategists to infiltrate the secular Amal and reform it from within.” (ibid)

Amal thus was a vector for some revolutionary vigor into Lebanon, different from the secular, political reformist energy that characterized the group primarily. However, this changed with the Israel invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which would encourage revolutionary energy take on a life of its own. Israel invaded to neutralize the PLO—the Palestinian Liberation Organization—which had entrenched itself in Southern Lebanon. Norton says:

“Within the Israeli government at the time—as within the American foreign policy establishment—there was little understanding of the developments under way among the Shi"i Muslims of Lebanon and no analysis was made of the impact of this invasion on them. Even if Israel had not launched its invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, the young would-be revolutionaries among the Shi"a would have pursued their path of emulating Iran’s Islamic revolution. Undoubtedly, however, the invasion pushed the Shi"a further in this direction, creating conditions for the establishment and flourishing of Hezbollah.” (33)

and:

“As [former Israeli prime minister Ehud] Barak’s comment suggests, by occupying Lebanon rather than promptly withdrawing, Israel wore out is warm welcome and provided a context for Hezbollah to grow.” (ibid)

It is important to remember that there was broader civil war happening in Lebanon at this time, partly caused by the presence of the Palestinians in the South. As mentioned above, Amal would eventually develop animosity to the Palestinians forces inhabiting Lebanese territory (who had a history of mistreating Shiite and Lebanese people in the region), even to the extent that they effectively welcomed an Israeli invasion as a means to weaken the Palestinian guerrillas. This was partly the product of Syrian influence who sought to keep Palestinians in Lebanon weak:

“For its part, Syria, in the early 1980s, had a very different future in mind. It saw in Amal a mechanism for checking Palestinian power in Lebanon, especially if Arafat should seek his own route to peace, deserting Syria. By 1980 and 1981 young Amalists were going off to train in Syria and coming back wearing new, Syria-style uniforms and sporting military-style radios. As tensions between Amal and the Palestinians worsened in 1981 and 1982, many expected a war—but not with Israel. Some leading Amal figures even argued that they were in an objective alliance with Israel against Palestinian guerrillas.” (32)

Eventual Hezbollah leaders and members would cite the invasion as the birth of Hezbollah. That said, Norton clarifies that the group did not centralize until a few years later:

“From 1982 through the mid-1980s it was less an organization than a cabal. The Lebanese who comprised its first cadre were young, committed revolutionaries, in some cases barely in their twenties.” (34)

Iran and Syria both claimed a role in establishing the party:

“For Iran, the creation of Hezbollah was a realization of the revolutionary state’s zealous campaign to spread the message of the self-styled “Islamic revolution.”” (34)

and:

“From Syria’s standpoint, the new militant Shi"i party was a fortuitous instrument for preserving Syrian interests: supporting Hezbollah allowed Syria to maintain its alliance with Iran, gain the means for striking indirectly at both Israel and the United States, and keep its Lebanese allies, including the Amal movement, in line.” (34-35)

Even so, Syria historically would never favor Hezbollah over Amal, and Iran certainly was the major external influence on Hezbollah’s early development.

Hezbollah would eventually come to force with the publication of the 1985 document dedicated to the “Downtrodden in Lebanon and in the World” (35). It explicitly invokes the Iranian Revolution as influence (35-36). One of the major positions laid out in the manifesto is a hard-line position against imperialistic influence, both Eastern (USSR) and Western (USA) (36). Other quotes from Norton and the manifesto itself indicating the early ideological leanings of Hezbollah include:

“It is time to realize that all the Western ideas concerning man’s origin and nature cannot respond to man’s aspirations or rescue him from the darkness of misguidedness and ignorance” (36 Norton; 184 original)

“It declares that the world is divided between the oppressed and the oppressors, the latter being “the countries of the arrogant world”—especially the United States and the Soviet Union (still Cold War adversaries in 1985)— who struggle for influence at the expense of the Third World.” (36 Norton)

“Within Lebanon, Hezbollah proved to be especially intolerant of the Communist Party. Dozens, if not hundreds, of party members were killed in a brutal, bloody campaign of suppression and assassination in 1984 and 1985.” (37)

“’Imam Khomeini, the leader, has repeatedly stressed that America is the reason for all our catastrophes and the source of all malice. By fighting it, we are only exercising our legitimate right to defend our Islam and the dignity of our nation.’” (37; 170)

“Disunity was caused by imperialism and its agents, including compromisers, evil "ulama, and the leaders imposed by colonialism (184). It followed, then, that the Lebanese government was corrupt to its core.” (37)

“’Thus, we have seen that aggression can be repelled only with the sacrifice of blood, and that freedom is not given but regained with the sacrifice of both heart and soul'” (38; 171).

“Hezbollah regards negotiations with Israel as only a form of compromise that validates Israel’s occupation of Palestine. ‘We condemn strongly all the plans for mediation between us and Israel and we consider the mediators a hostile party because their mediation will only serve to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine’ (179). The ultimate objective is to destroy Israel and to liberate Palestine.” (38)

Importantly:

“A key unanswered question in the letter is, precisely, Hezbollah’s political design for Lebanon, a significant omission in view of that organization’s expressed disdain for the existing political system. The letter only states that, once Lebanon is freed from external and internal domination, the Lebanese will be allowed to determine their fate; if they choose freely, they will only choose Islam.” (39)

Also:

“Hezbollah advocates ‘adoption of the Islamic system on the basis of free and direct selection by the people, not the basis of forceful imposition, as some people imagine’ (175). Unfortunately the organization’s history of violence against its political and ideological rivals casts doubt on Hezbollah’s commitment to voluntarism.” (40)

In summary, then, Hezbollah positioned itself as a revolutionary group aimed primarily at removing all imperialistic and ideologically foreign influence from Lebanon and establishing a unified Lebanon under presumably Shiite Islamic rule in the style of revolutionary Iran. While the party shifted away from parts of the manifesto as Lebanese context changed (such as with the end of the civil war and the group’s foray into mainstream politics), the document remains (or remained at the time of Norton’s writing in 2008) a centerpiece for the group’s ideology: “Still, the bald fact is that the 1985 program has not been explicitly replaced,” (46).

Worth noting quickly is part of the religious mythology underlying the Iranian revolution, both of which would influence Hezbollah itself. The figure who provided the religious inspiration for the Iranian revolution was the martyr Hussein, grandson of their prophet Muhammad:

“The event that most shaped the ethos of Shia is called Ashura, which refers to the fate of the grandson of the prophet Imam Hussein.” (49). Basically, an ascension crisis leads to his death in spectacular fashion against the competing faction, Yazid, caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate:

“The lessons of religion are captured in the dramas and tragedies of its heroes. In the case of the Shi"a, the main event in their history is the story of Hussein’s defeat and martyrdom, in 680 c.e., at the hands of Yazid’s massive army at Karbala, in what is now modern Iraq. Surrounded, outmanned, yet refusing to submit to Yazid’s authority, and thereby surrender his claim to be the successor to the prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussein’s fate was sealed in a bloody confrontation lasting ten days on a blistering Iraqi plain.” (50)

This religious imagery was used by leading Iranian revolutionaries as inspiration for their revolution:

“Hussein’s sacrifice has special significance in recent history, as its reinterpretation by Musa al-Sadr, Ruhollah Khomeini, Ali Shariati, and other leading figures of Shiism provided the revolutionary exemplar for both the overthrow of the shah in Iran and the mobilization of Shii Muslims in Lebanon. Hussein’s martyrdom is presented as a model of courage, assertiveness, and self-help…” (50)

Additionally:

“...the Israeli occupiers are the modern incarnation of Yazid. In contrast to the tragedy that befell Hussein, however, this time the Shia, having learned from Karbala [the region where Hussein died in battle], will confront and defeat Yazid.” (66)

It is thus apparent and important that there is deeper and more concrete ideological imagery at play in the development of Hezbollah beyond their general and obvious Islamic character. They have at least one historical event to which they could turn for real inspiration for a smaller group with the moral high ground (in their view, of course) fighting against a larger overpowering force. Yet they actually attempt to learn from the historical episode as they obviously do not want to recreate the defeat that Hussein suffered; they want to actually win against the larger foreign powers.

Birth of Hezbollah brief: The broader socio-historical context provided in the first section converged with broader geopolitical developments in the late 70s and early 80s to effectively give birth to Hezbollah. Two significant sources of ideological inspiration came from the Iranian revolution of 1978-9 and the historical religious episode of Imam Hussein’s martyrdom against a large, immoral army. Beyond this, actual positive foreign influence came from Iran and Syria, while negative influence came mostly from Israel occupying the South of Lebanon. Their ideology was effectively anti-colonialist with Islamic justifications and overall flavor, and they differed from their predecessor Amal by being more (Shiite) Islamic, radical, revolutionary, and focused along all of these lines; they were committed revolutionaries, at least in the early days, whereas Amal was reformist.

Development and Effectiveness

The first years for Hezbollah were violent. With the country still at war with itself (and with Hezbollah taking part), the group is associated with several kidnappings of foreigners, at least one plane hijacking (41-42), and bombings (including suicide bombings (71-72)). Norton later has a discussion on Hezbollah and terrorism, with the main idea being that Hezbollah has committed—or can at least be associated with—acts that constitute “terrorism”, but also that it is hard to paint the group as a whole as a singularly terrorist group (75-79). In general, these tactics led to animosity between Hezbollah and Amal, and these two groups would take up arms against each in 1988. Hezbollah proved to be the more effective force; they effectively dismantled Amal’s military capacity in a few regions and generally reduced Amal’s political power (43-44) by 1989.

Hezbollah’s initial trial by fire and immediate developments are nicely explained by Norton here:

“Hezbollah, from its first moments, had always defined itself in contrast to Amal. The coterie of young clerics who made up Hezbollah’s cadre in the 1980s and early 1990s resented Amal’s non-clerical leadership and accommodation with Lebanese clientelism. Unlike the Amal politicos, who were intent on comprising the new Shii bourgeoisie, the leaders of Hezbollah—brimming with revolutionary passion—refused to accommodate a corrupt political system, or so they said in the 1980s…but by the 1990s their fervor began to give way to a more realistic sense of the possible.

“In contrast to the fierce ideological tenor in the 1985 open letter, Hezbollah now pragmatically confronted the shifting political landscape of regional politics, as well as the changing terrain of Lebanese politics. The result has been the evolution to a Janus-faced organization, retaining a fierce commitment to confront Israel’s occupation in southern Lebanon while engaging in precisely the game of confessional Lebanese politics that they previously had denounced.” (45)

Hezbollah gained popularity among the broader Shiite population following Amal’s lackluster military performance and corruption juxtaposed with Hezbollah’s ostensible “relative integrity” (45). Even so, Amal has remained a significant political competitor to (and ally with) Hezbollah.

Hezbollah being a primarily religious group engages with public Shiite ceremony as a means of making its presence known and demonstrating their principles and cohesion: “Ashura is not merely the grass-roots practice of religion. It is also a political event, an opportunity for the rival Amal movement and Hezbollah to show their strength and demonstrate their solidarity,” (58; see also 56 or most of chapter 3). Ideological differences between Amal and Hezbollah manifest visibly during these events: “Whereas the Amal marchers seemed to be loosely organized but not unruly, Hezbollah members marched with military precision and organized effective cordons for crowd control. The contrast between the loosely organized, populist Amal and the tightly disciplined Hezbollah was quite obvious,” (59). Furthermore, curated renditions of the religious imagery mentioned in the above section are exploited by Hezbollah and Amal: “In this sense, the rituals offer no less than a public performance of ideology, with, for example, rituals explicitly casting Israel in the role of Caliph Yazid, the Umayyad ruler responsible for Imam Hussein’s martyrdom,” (67).

Hezbollah's main leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is largely responsible for Hezbollah’s positive public image and standing thanks to charisma, ostensible integrity, and being generally a good strategist and tactician. For example:

“Nasrallah also exploited the occasion of Muharram [the Islamic calendar time containing the Asura rituals] to further legitimate Hezbollah as a social and political force among the Shi"a. The party benefited from a wave of support for its leading role in fighting Israel and creating the pressure that prompted Israel’s withdrawal. In contrast to Lebanon’s elected political leaders, who seemed thoroughly flummoxed by Israel’s declared intention to leave southern Lebanon, with or without an agreement with Syria, Nasrallah projected a tough, clearheaded image,” (68; italics added for emphasis).

Another major factor in Hezbollah’s rise in popularity is their stance and effective action against Israel. Remembering that Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1982:

“Within months of Israel’s June 1982 invasion, when it became clear that Israel had no intention of disengaging from Lebanon anytime soon, a variety of groups across the political spectrum began to organize attacks against the Israeli occupation forces…By the 1990s, however, Hezbollah was carrying out most of the attacks, each appearing to have been characterized by careful planning and well-practiced professionalism.” (80)

The Lebanese civil war that bore witness to the birth of Hezbollah came to an end in 1990, with at least one closing condition that benefited Hezbollah: they were the only militia having taken part in the war permitted to retain their armed, militant wing (83).

Following a cease-fire with the Israelis in 1985, part of Hezbollah’s general strategy was to strictly follow a set of largely honor based rules when engaging with Israeli forces still in the South of Lebanon (83-88). This helped to bolster their public image by allowing them to continue engaging Israeli forces in the “security zone” established in the South of Lebanon while also demonstrating their professionalism. In 2000, Israel would unilaterally withdraw its forces from Lebanon, and this event rose important questions for Hezbollah: “The summer following Israel’s withdrawal, a serious debate arose within Hezbollah about whether to focus on Lebanese politics and themes, such as corruption, or to maintain the resistance posture both in Lebanon and the Middle East. After internal party discussions settled on the latter strategy…” (90), though they still maintained militant pretext by citing the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, which was/is claimed by Lebanon but is not effectively ruled by them, either.

In 1992, the party decided enter official politics. Leading up to this decision was internal debate. For example:

“However, the most influential Shi"i cleric in Lebanon, Shaikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, had been espousing a pro-election position for years. Fadlallah argued that, because revolutionary transition to Islamic rule and an Islamic state was impossible in the diverse Lebanese society, gradual reformation was necessary. And that, insisted Fadlallah, required participating in the political system.” (99)

and:

“The debate turned on three key questions. From the standpoint of Islamic law, was participation in a “non-Islamic” government legitimate? Should ideology bend to practical interests? And would Hezbollah, by its participation, be co-opted into a secular political system, thereby deserting its principles and Islamic vision?” (100).

Furthermore:

“But officials debating the question also saw strategic benefits to winning elected office. Hezbollah would gain both official recognition as a political institution in Lebanon as well as a public podium, and would also be able to influence the budget to its constituents’ advantage.” (101)

As part of Hezbollah’s political strategy, Norton notes that:

“...most striking about Hezbollah’s political campaigns is the extent to which nonreligious themes are habitually emphasized. The party electoral platform emphasizes battling economic exploitation and underdevelopment, inequities in the political system, personal freedom and opportunity, and, of course, security. Hezbollah’s electoral strategy does not dwell explicitly on religious themes at all…” (102).

Additionally, part of Hezbollah’s public strategy is the offering of social services: “Hezbollah offers an array of social services to its constituents that include construction companies, schools, hospitals, dispensaries, and micro-finance initiatives,” (109). Though they are not the only political party to offer such or similar services, it nonetheless plays an important part in maintaining a presence and gaining standing in the public psyche. Further:

“it is impossible to appreciate the striking durability and loyalty that modern Shi"i groups, such as Hezbollah (or comparable groups in Iraq, for instance), generate unless one understands that their strength derives from the strong social fabric that they have woven over the years.” (112)

Norton attributes four sociological changes in Lebanese society because of and following the civil war to explain “why sectarianism has kept a stubborn grip on the country, why Hezbollah has succeeded so well in mobilizing support, and why inter-confessional cooperation is more elusive today than it was a few decades ago,” (121). These are:

“For one, the outbreak of intercommunal violence at the start of the civil war forced a significant displacement of people that transformed the previous, socially heterogeneous communities into more segmented patterns of living.” (121)

“Second, sectarianism has been abetted by growing economic difficulties, income inequality, and immense corruption...This has resulted in a shrinking middle class, increased flight of Lebanese with the financial means to emigrate (largely Christians, who have comparatively easier access to visas to the West), and growing dependence of the remaining population on the patronage dispensed by the new sectarian political bosses (zu"ama)…” (122)

“A third cause of rising sectarianism concerns the revival of religious institutions and leaders… A political environment with little opportunity for men and women of real stature to develop as political leaders attracts religious figures prepared to criticize widespread corruption and a generally compromised political system, and also advance a convincing normative model for a religiously rooted society.” (122-123)

"A final reason concerns regional developments that have affected Sunni-Shi"i relations throughout the Middle East and beyond. The political ascendancy of the majority Shiite community in Iraq in the wake of the American occupation has heightened the shared identity of Lebanese Shiite to their religious brethren in Iraq. The rise of violent Sunni movements, such as al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, which are virulently anti-Shiite and frequently deny that the Shiite qualify as Muslims, has encouraged Shiite Muslims across the Middle East and even in Pakistan to identify themselves more in sectarian than secular terms. Younger Shiite in the region are much less likely than their fathers and grandfathers were a generation or more ago to join secular parties of the ideological left or right.” (123)

Between Israel’s withdrawal in 2000 and re-invasion of Lebanon in 2006, Hezbollah used its political power to maintain its armed wing (130-132), and continually stoked the Israeli’s ire: “Israeli officials have endured Hezbollah’s taunting ever since their unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, and have found Nasrallah’s May 2000 comparison of Israel with a fragile “spider’s web” especially grating,” (133).

Ultimately, Israel’s invasion was costly for both sides, mostly materially for the Lebanese, while mostly in terms of morale, prestige, and geopolitics for the Israelis. Norton says:

“After more than a month of Israeli bombardment, Hezbollah emerged with its support intact, if not bolstered, in the Shi"i community. Its impressive and rapid response to the needs of those whose homes and lives were ravaged—mostly but not all Shi"i Muslims—further consolidated Hezbollah’s impressive base of support.” (140)

Furthermore:

“Given Hezbollah’s broad base of support, and the fact that its Lebanese supporters see no other force that can thwart Israel should it decide to re-ignite the war, it is completely unrealistic that the new international contingents will succeed either in disarming Hezbollah or in diminishing its appeal.” (141)

This is not to say that the war was a stunning political victory for Hezbollah; Norton adds later:

“In contrast to the celebrations of Hezbollah’s “victory” in the wider Arab world, within Lebanon adulation of Hezbollah was far from universal...cross-confessional solidarity faded quickly as Lebanese began to openly question Hezbollah’s role in provoking the war. It was hard to celebrate a “victory” in the face of a reconstruction bill now estimated at $4 billion.” (152)

That said, Hezbollah and its political allies (which coincidentally include Amal) have managed to maintain enough power to prevent the more “establishment” coalitions from ruling the country at Hezbollah’s and its constituents’ expense:

“Hezbollah is using its arms and enhanced political standing in the Islamic world to attempt to change the delicate political balance of Lebanon’s sectarian government in its favor. And the ruling Maronite- Sunni-Druze coalition is doing what it can to block such change.” (155)

Development and Effectiveness brief: Hezbollah has been a militant group since its inception during the civil war as a revolutionary Shiite militia and political party. In establishing legitimacy for themselves among their constituents and recognition from foreign powers, their strategy has generally been to use an array of tactics that range from violent terrorism to providing meaningful social services across religious lines. Importantly, they have generally been effective at using this array while remaining fairly true to their founding ideology. Strong, principled, and intelligent leadership has played no small part in this effectiveness. The group has managed to convert and or exploit existing social arrangements, receptivity to wider changes, and flexibility in approach into meaningful political power and international recognition (not always favorable, granted). While their grander designs have yet to be implemented, they have become and remain a potent social force within Lebanon.

Jorge Clúni

Dec 6, 2022

Hezbollah was apparently instrumental in defeating ISIS and pushing them out of territories gained in Syria and Iraq...
foreignpolicyblogs.com/2014/08/31/hezbollahs-war-against-isis/

My takeaways from your highlights from the book, filtered through the goal of making an anti-tech revolutionary movement:

1. was founded in the mythology of an Islamic sect, revolving around a battle at which a hero was martyred

2. being religious rather than secular helped Hezbollah outpace Amal in recruitment (and provided reason for Iran to support Hezbollah)

3. being a social minority helped the Shia bond together in the group Hezbollah; external pressures on the larger group (Lebanese) helped break that apart, which then helped solidify the smaller group (Shiites) for Hezbollah's benefit: "the outbreak of intercommunal violence at the start of the civil war forced a significant displacement of people that transformed the previous, socially heterogeneous communities into more segmented patterns of living."

4. being more regimented and disciplined than Amal worked to the advantage of Hezbollah; Amal allowed more diversity of thought and ideology than did Hezbollah

5. initial founders and activists were zealous youths in their 20s

6. Hezbollah promotes a public image of their leader Nasrallah, who is charismatic, a good strategist and tactician, and seemingly genuine and pious

7. Hezbollah's "impressive and rapid response to the needs of those whose homes and lives were ravaged [by months of Israeli bombardment in 2006] —mostly but not all Shi"i Muslims— further consolidated Hezbollah’s impressive base of support."

8. Hezbollah's Islamic views somewhat compete with (and undercut) the platforms of secular Marxists: “Hezbollah offers an array of social services to its constituents that include construction companies, schools, hospitals, dispensaries, and micro-finance initiatives” & "their strength derives from the strong social fabric that they have woven over the years"

9. when able, Hezbollah made a brutal purge where it was able to - against the Communist Party

10. attacks against Israeli forces seem to be well-planned and professional

11. fiercely militant and uncompromising on this; Hezbollah took a position and did not waiver from fighting against the Israeli presence in Lebanon, rather than await an Israeli agreement with Syria or independent Israeli action toward withdrawal

12. Hezbollah had power enough to enforce that no disarmament requirement be applied to them in the 1990 agreement ending the internecine war of Lebanon

13. target one enemy at a time: Hezbollah sights on America, which is not near, but attacks Israel (regarded as an American proxy) which oppresses Muslims in Palestine

14. could retain a militant, revolutionary posture/ideal because a somewhat reformist, gradualist position for attaining Islamic law across Lebanon was advocated by the nation's most recognized Shia cleric

15. potential desire for Islamic society/law is moderated in their public outreach: "Hezbollah’s electoral strategy does not dwell explicitly on religious themes at all…"

staggeringdefeat

Dec 8, 2022

(I apologize for this taking so long, especially since this is the part that will be the most engaging)

Lessons For the Movement

Whereas above I tried to objectively present the most important information provided by the book, here I draw out some lessons for our movement based on this case study. As the ideas here are more reflective or speculative, I might update the post from time to time if new thoughts come to mind, but I also welcome and encourage everyone to post their own thoughts on Hezbollah.

First, it makes sense to note the similarities and differences between the two movements. I’ll begin with differences in no particular order of importance:

Ideological: This is probably the most obvious difference that and it hardly needs pointing out. Even so, it doesn’t hurt to discuss it a little more. Hezbollah is primarily a religious phenomenon. As religion is basically a type of ideology more broadly, I would argue that them being religious is not the primary difference; there is little to nothing preventing anti-tech ideology from developing a religious character, however unlikely that may be. The difference lies more in the fact that they are Islamic, and while they have no stated intention of making Lebanon into a revolutionary Islamic state a la Iran, they do have a stated intention of preserving a multi-confessional state of Lebanon. Furthermore, Islam in one form or another has been around as a centralized and practiced religion for almost two thousand years; the anti-tech ideology has yet to be unified and implemented in such a way. Additionally, it is arguable that Islam itself as a centralized religion is an older iteration of mass societal technology, and would thus might ideally be done away with after a successful anti-tech revolution.
Geographic: Hezbollah came about in a specific place as the result of specific geo-historical circumstances whereas our movement is to be global in nature. But, even if we were to assume that the USA is where most of the ideological development is centered, the USA is far different from Lebanon in terms of geographic size, aggregate population, population density, natural resources and subsequent industries, neighboring countries, history, and so on. What this means is that our target is much larger, amorphous, and abstract than Hezbollah’s; they had the “luxuries” of having an easily definable and relatively small population to which they could appeal, perpetual historical religious conflict in their region which they could ideologically exploit, and an easily identifiable yet defining enemy with a specific geographic location—Israel.
Demographic: Hezbollah was the product of a specific and historic population: the Shiite minority in Lebanon. They were not crafting a fundamentally new ideology, but were appealing to the frustrations of already existent ideological adherents. Their ideology was relatively revolutionary, mainly in that it sought to unite and move the Shiite population towards radical political action, but was relatively non-revolutionary in that it did not seek to destroy the Lebanese state as such (let alone the economic and techno-industrial infrastructure of that state). Our movement is basically starting from scratch, at least insofar as we seek to develop and disseminate a cohesive anti-tech ideology that emphasizes revolution. We might be able to appeal to certain existing demographics, but these populations will only be tangentially related to our ideology. For example, we might appeal to permaculturalists, homesteaders, native tribes, anarchists, primitivists, hippies, environmentalists, or whomever, yet it is obvious that these groups are dissimilar beyond having a vaguely negative stance on the existing system. We do not have a sizable population already following the teachings of, say, Kaczynski, who are ready to militarize and gain political power and recognition. So, our ideas are relatively new, they are less popular gloabally, and they are not locally concentrated anywhere (even within the United States). Someone might suggest the Amish or Mennonites as counterexamples of sizable concentrated extant historical anti-tech leaning populations, but I do not think they are a realistic ally—at least early on, but probably ever.
Geo-political: Hezbollah was directly inspired and aided by the revolutionaries in Iran of the late 70s. This played out in two major ways: they 1) had as teachers people who lived through a revolution, and 2) received economic, ideological, and even military support from a neighboring ally. To a lesser extent, some Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, and other Shiites in the Middle-East would all support Hezbollah in concrete, material ways. Our movement does not have this luxury. We do not have an allied state in any direction funneling us money or arms to spread anti-tech ideas or to expedite the revolution against the system’s infrastructure. We are on our own. Furthermore, we do not have revolutionary teachers. There have been no meaningful revolutions in the past few decades, or, if there have been, no participants in those revolutions are currently ideologically sympathetic enough to show us the ropes. We could theoretically reach out to Hezbollah, for instance, and see if they’ll teach us how to develop propaganda. What is the likely outcome here (other than being placed on more federal watch lists)? If the opportunity ever arises for direct action, perhaps then we could seek counsel from older environmental activists (perhaps former members of Earth First!) or resistance movements (like Hezbollah), but we are not there yet.

Now for similarities:

Ideological: Despite the obvious differences, there is at least one analogous fundamental similarity between our two movements, and that is the fact that both have primarily a negative motivation: Hezbollah’s is the destruction of Israel and the removal of all foreign (i.e. imperialistic) influence in Lebanon, and the anti-tech movement’s is the destruction of the techno-industrial system and the removal of all psycho-technological influence in people, both in the name of freedom for their respective populations (Lebanese for the former, all of mankind for the latter). Additionally, both movements refrain from speculative state building—Hezbollah has remained quiet on what comes after for Lebanon once Israel is destroyed, foreign influence is eradicated, and the Shiite population is fairly represented, just as adherents of strict anti-tech ideology refrain from prescribing certain social arrangements after the collapse of the System. Obviously there are some important differences here, and this similarity is mostly analogous; Hezbollah, for instance, almost certainly envisions that it will play a continuing political role in Lebanon if its grand aims are achieved, whereas anti-tech people generally seek to disband everything currently recognizable as “political”.
Another similarity I mentioned above in my discussion of ideological dissimilarities, and that is that both groups view themselves as revolutionary. I can also add that both might see themselves as resistance groups—Hezbollah certainly does, but I think a similar sentiment might exist in at least a segment of anti-tech adherents. The degree of revolution differs significantly, but revolutionary thought is there nonetheless.

Now here are general lessons I’m taking away from this case study. These should be read and understood with the context provided in this section above.

1. The Need for Good Leadership

I did not talk much about Hezbollah’s figureheads and leadership, mostly because Norton does not dedicate too much time on them, but it was obvious throughout that their group succeeded because it was headed by competent, dedicated, and genuine leaders. Hassan Nasrallah is the big name, and he has proven to be a good public speaker as well as generally competent. The group’s biggest blunder—at least in the history provided by this book—was their instigating Israel to invade in 2006 while simultaneously underestimating how severely Israel would retaliate. Other than this, they have proven effective in a multitude of ways. Even in this, they, or at least Lebanon, proved to be too hard to swallow even for the relatively powerful Israel. They have been good at knowing what to say as well as when, how, and where to say it, backed up by a ideologically consistent why.

A long list of traits describing “good” or effective leadership might be given with enough time, but the most obvious and important ones seem to be: intelligent, charismatic, honest/genuine, committed/dedicated, and responsive. These should be familiar to everyone already. Intelligence is mostly about how effectively leaders solve problems; charisma deals with how well leaders can represent the group publicly as well as persuade opponents or neutrals through words; honesty relates to how much the leaders seems to actually believe what their group is about (i.e. they do not come across as a poseur, grifter, or psychopath); dedication is how much time and energy leadership invests in its group; and responsiveness is about how quickly and thoroughly leadership responds to the concerns of its members and or constituents, as well as the range of concerns to which it can and will respond.

The only one of these that the anti-tech movement could possibly, maybe live without is charisma as this is more important for traditional political movements. We do not seek or expect mass approval or conversion. That said, it would be folly to ignore the importance of charisma or to actively not select for it. We should do our best to find effective leadership with as many positive character traits as possible. My point is more that our movement can probably survive and be effective even if we lack an effective public-facing rhetorician equivalent to Nasrallah.

2. The Need for Doctrine

Hezbollah did not become a cohesive organization until they published their 1985 manifesto detailing their ideological commitments and justifications. This document of theirs has not been renounced even though they have transitioned into mainstream Lebanese politics and ostensibly repudiated parts of it as political stunt. Not only does Hezbollah have this document, they also have whatever higher religious authority to appeal to, whether that is Allah or the written discourse of historical (Shiite) Islam. Thus, however superfluous, they have backing for their words and actions.

Kaczynski himself speaks in favor of developing a revolutionary “myth” or ideology. While I have had some difficultly interpreting this, I think it is safe to assume that he does not consider his writings anti-tech doctrine right now, but certainly leaves the possibility open that they could become doctrine for some group(s). Of course, a group can debate if they want to adopt his works wholesale as they are or quote parts of them, or if they want to use only his works or if they want to bolster with other thinkers, or any number of questions, but the point is that, as of right now, we do not have doctrine. I generally expect that everyone interested in anti-tech thought has read ISAIF. Still, I am not quite convinced ISAIF is sufficient by itself to answer every question facing or that will face the movement. Whatever they decide, a revolutionary anti-tech group needs to decide what the fundamental and recognized ideological basis for their movement is. Maybe they issue a new manifesto of their own, maybe they supplement TK’s works, maybe they start from scratch (hard to imagine, but theoretically possible). But it is something that needs to happen, and soon. We need to clearly state what we want and why we want it. Having established ideology (i.e. doctrine) will allow us to filter possible recruits by scaring away insufficiently radical and committed individuals while attracting adequate ones. It can provide resolve among members, settle disputes, and establish legitimacy.

Perhaps the centralizing and, truthfully, authoritarian aura of this proposal rubs people the wrong way. This is understandable as we presumably wish to ultimately do away with such things on a societal level. But anti-tech is not a-technological. We are not giving up on the technological mindset as such—not yet, at least. That means that we believe in using technology against technology, and, to that end, it is in our best interest to use the most effective means. This in turn means that we need to do what has proven effective elsewhere (ex. establish official doctrine)—or waste time trying to experiment with novels means of organization and implementation that somehow do not rely on purity measures. I do not think this is prudent given the nature of our situation.

3. The Utility of Public Outreach and Social Support

I am not calling this a need as it is much less important on a strategic level for our group, but the Hezbollah case does show how effective it can be to engage a relevant population in tangible ways. We do not have religious ceremonies to participate in, we are not representing a certain historic demographic, and we do not have funding or a material basis in general to be launching house re-building campaigns. That said, it might make tactical sense on occasion for a revolutionary anti-tech group to reach out and assist certain populations that have been directly harmed by industrial or environmental disasters, for example. The aim here would not be so much to rebuild the infrastructure that this community lost, but to use the disaster as an example of the ills of industrial society.

4. The Utility (or Necessity) of Militancy

I am not advocating for anything illegal here or elsewhere, but it is obvious that militant, organized, and targeted violence can be effective given the right circumstances, such as in Hezbollah's case against occupying Israeli force, or in the hypothetical dissolution of the current United States state. In this hypothetical scenario, there might be no state apparatus to protect industrial, energetic, or economic infrastructure from an armed resistance or insurgent group. In such an environment, such a group could inflict massive, perhaps irreparable damage to these systems locally. If this were to happen globally around the same time, all the better. But it might be enough for it to happen only in one area so long as the entire global system is sufficiently strained.

But back to reality. Militancy will have only extremely limited utility until we reach such a point as just discussed. At most, there might be a militant character to a group’s structure and general character, and the character of its members in that they are expected to be extremely disciplined, committed, and loyal. Yet even here, it is unlikely that militancy will become a feature or tactic of our movement until further in its development. We do not have the overarching infrastructure necessary for militant behavior to make sense, let alone be possible in a top-down perspective. Individual members can act as disciplined and committed as they want, but I think group loyalty is what separates these from true militancy.

5. The Utility of Survivalist Training and Frugality

Hezbollah is just one example of the effectiveness of guerrilla tactics. While we will never be guerrillas in the traditional sense of the word, it is hard to imagine a case where merely knowing survivalist skills could harm our members. The same goes for further studying of other resistance, insurgent, or guerrilla forces. Practicing frugality on a personal level means a few things. First, it means that if any of us live to see the System destroyed, we will be better prepared mentally for the life of struggle that will follow. Second, it means that each of us will be able to dedicate either or both more time and money to the movement.

I am not drawing the frugality suggestion directly from the Hezbollah case study, but am more thinking about the effects and benefits of adopting the lifestyle of guerrilla fighters outside of insurgent or resistance contexts.

End
As I said above, I may update this from time to time if I think of something else. I also encourage people to read more on Hezbollah from other sources or to share their thoughts on what I've said.

Jorge Clúni

Dec 13, 2022

Good summary!

I'll also note one difference which sits in our favor: Destruction (of technological society, for us) is easier than creation (of a Sharia-governed nation, or a Shia-dominated Lebanon, for Hezbollah).

1979 Iranian Revolution

Jorge Clúni

Nov 3, 2022

Source: anti-tech.freeforums.net/thread/41/1979-iranian-revolution

I've been doing a bit of reading on this, trying to deduce why it was the Islamists who ultimately took state power, when there was a sizeable array of contenders (nationalists, constitutionalists, Marxist Muslims, atheist communists, Islamists - and factions among each type) which coalesced to make the revolution. I'm still parsing through a lot of info gathered, but I can just start relating the info gleaned with a couple essential pieces.

From "Iran 1979: Anatomy of a Revolution" (Al Jazeera, 02 Jan. 2009), see here: youtu.be/SJzuRf3Pyjk&t=30m24s
the first to speak from the point I've linked above is current Berkeley Prof. Hamid Algar, a Khomeini biographer; the second man, at one minute along, is Abbas Milani, a former Maoist who is now a self-described "neocon" and Prof. at Stanford. Here's his words:

Six months of my prison was spent with people who became leaders of the Islamic Republic. I was in prison with [Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani, [Hussein-Ali] Montazeri, [Mohammad-Reza] Mahdavi Kani - almost the whole who's-who of the Republic. I was in the same cell block. I ate with them, we talked to them, I played volleyball with them on a regular daily basis. And if you had told them, or us, that exactly a year and a half from then, "You guys will be the rulers of Iran," both of us - them and us - would have told you that you need to see a psychiatrist.

Other points of note from this documentary:

the Left thought that they could let the Islamists motivate the masses and then they could take control;
the imprisoned clerics and imprisoned Marxists both did not foresee the Islamists taking power
in addition to being a motivator for the faithful, Khomeini was a visual symbol for the whole resistance/revolution
much newsreel footage of the revolutionary period shows masses of people carrying portraits and massive photo prints and painted banners depicting Khomeini; there was seemingly no one equivalent person to embody the Leftist groups and Marxist movement - Marx and Lenin were long dead and weren't coming back to life

And here are the takeaways from this 23-min. audio report, from 26 Nov. 2021 ("On the Media", WNYC Studios) - and note, my spellings of names may be off:
Says Mohsen Sazeghara, the interviewed Iranian Leftist translator of Khomeini tapes, based in France: "We needed a religious leader that was activist against the Shah". Although Khomeini advocated for theocracy, the Leftists decided nonetheless to ally with him against the Shah (the cliché is, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"), and they thought they could use him as a puppet and then cast him aside. When they translated his answers to the Western press, they omitted any mention about making a theocracy and Sharia law. The Lefties recorded Khomeini's speeches and recorded their own intro to them, then called Iranian allies and played the tapes over the phone while the allies in Iran recorded the speeches played over the phone. At the height of this distribution effort, 90K mosques were distributing the tapes.

Shah's political opponents: 1K executed, 4500 imprisoned
the Leftists - educated in Western countries - thought they could use Khomeini and then cast him aside, and hatched a plan to make Khomeini a superstar
Khomeini knew what to say and when to say it, was able to "go viral", despite his bad grammar and provincial accent and simple-sentence manner of speaking
while the uppercrust of Iranian society was mocking Khomeini, "his speech was more attractive for ordinary people" (Mohsen Sazeghara)
Khomeini was practically hypnotizing people; when he called for strikes, when he told people to fill the streets, they dutifully responded
"He was very adamant, he was kind of crazy, he was the kind of guy who would not compromise" (Arash Azizi)
the Leftists regarded Khomeini's speeches as "crazy talk" (Kim Ghattas)

This brief bit of info doesn't take into account many other circumstances on the ground in Iran, movements by the revolutionaries and errors by the regime - but the spontaneous catalysts and the government missteps cannot usually be created by revolutionaries, and these moves by the Leftists and the Islamists should be well understood by anti-tech revolutionaries.

ATR media

Any relevant online media, especially that which attacks or undermines the technological system

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"Secrets of the Tribe" (2010)

Jorge Clúni

Feb 27, 2023

anti-tech.freeforums.net/thread/86/secrets-tribe-2010

This documentary is about the anthropologists (led by Napoleon Chagnon) visiting the Yanomami tribe, and all the surrounding controversies/scandals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7SXbsn0hU

One of the biggest takeaways for me - after the initial statements of Yanomami resentment for outsiders - is that the Yanomami woman who came to the USA and had kids, finally broke of civilized life and fled back to the jungle. Listen to the way that her former husband describes her feelings and relates her words: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWKbkJftV6M

And to my mind, the marriage of anthropologist Kenneth Goode to the Yanomami child (in our civilized judgment) Yarima, was not immoral, though out of line with the ethics of the science practices. In fact, it is said that the tribe encouraged Mr. Good, whom they liked, to choose a wife, and sanctioned the marriage; she wasn't kidnapped.

From www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-20001007-2000-10-07-0010060266-story.html:

In 1975, Kenneth Good, an anthropologist, traveled to the Venezuelan-Brazilian border area to study the lifestyle of a nomadic tribe called the Yanomami. During his 12-year stay in the Amazon, he fell in love with Yarima, a member of the Yanomami tribe. The couple married when Yarima turned 13 - the typical marrying age of the Yanomami.

In 1986, Good brought his pregnant wife to the U.S. The couple was legally married upon their arrival. Good, Yarima and their children visited the Yanomamo tribe in the jungle with assistance from the National Geographic Society in 1987. Yarima longed for her home, finding it difficult to make the transition from life in the jungle to life with Good. She returned alone to the Amazon and the Yanomami in 1993. According to a story in "The Times," a London newspaper, a photographer spotted Yarima in the jungle carrying a baby. She is reported to have remarried a tribesman.

In 1991, Good published a book about his experiences in the Amazon, called, "Into the Heart: One Man's Pursuit of Love and Knowledge among the Yanomami."

David Good, the son of Ken & Yarima, has done some interviews, logged some visits of his visit to the Yanomami in the Amazon (and of bringing his mother back to visit the USA), and written a book. Here is some of his media works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHXRVmSGkWU

A 19-minute interview on NPR, 31 Oct. 2014: www.npr.org/2014/10/31/360358350/yanomami-mami.

From this article of 30 Sept. 2020:

“What was supposed to be a 15-month research project ended up as a 12-year stint in the rain forest,” Good shared. His father lived with the Yanomami, who have no written language and no calendar. ...The Yanomami encouraged David’s father to take a wife. He was reluctant at first, but agreed to be betrothed to a girl named Yarima. The betrothal lasted for years before the marriage was consummated, and in that time Yarima became a woman. First a friendship developed between the two, which later blossomed into a romance.

Yet it was not possible for Kenneth Good to live in the Amazon indefinitely. He needed special permits to remain. So Yarima agreed to return with him to the western world. “It was like going in a time machine and fast forwarding 2,000 years,” Good said of his mother. “It was a huge culture shock. The first time someone turned on a car, she ran behind a bush and hid. She thought it was an animal. When she first saw her reflection in a full length mirror, it so scared her my dad had to cover it with a blanket.”

...“She loved carnivals, the beach, shopping, and French fries. She even loved 1980s perms,” said Good with a laugh as an image of his mother in a salon, with her straight hair transformed into curls, came on the screen of his presentation. “She learned English and basic math. Yet she was like a fish out of water.” ...And unlike the Yanomami, who hunted, worked, and spent all their time together, Yarima could not understand why her husband had to leave for work for hours every day. During a visit to the Amazon when David was five, his mother stayed behind. “She couldn’t live another day in this impersonal world where you walk by people without acknowledging them.”

Dr. Hortensia Caballero, an anthropologist, agreed to help Good make the trek to the Amazon in 2011, when he was 25. ...When he first arrived, his mother was... living in another Yanomami village. ...When his mother appeared... “All I wanted was to run towards her and hug her, but Yanomami don’t do that. Instead, I put a hand on her shoulder and she did the same. We both started crying and I was flooded with memories of having a mother.”

...He lived among the Yanomami, staying in a communal shabono, a roundhouse structure and the center of Yanomami life. “It’s your dining room, living room, kitchen. You’re born here, you die here, you play and eat here.” He braved malaria and vampire bats, and eating anteater, peccary, monkey, snakes, tarantulas (a delicacy!), termites and fish. He learned to hunt, fish, climb, and to use the rain forest like a grocery store. “Boa constrictor was my favorite. After being there a few days, my mom’s English slowly began to return. She dumped a dead boa constrictor in front of me and said ‘Hey, you want some snake?’ in perfect English,” he laughed. Not only did Good learn rain forest survival skills, but his Yanomami family taught him something else. “They taught me how to be human, how to live. They live a life based on reciprocity. They share everything. When I opened my emergency rations of crackers and jelly, I had to share it with the entire tribe. To do anything else would have been completely unthinkable.”

...His mother presented him with two women. He was told they were his wives and he should have children with them. The women were insistent on fulfilling their marital duties and there was a culture clash as Good politely declined. “As a Westerner, how could I take a Yanomami wife? But as a Yanomami, how could I not take a Yanomami wife? It was a struggle,” shared Good. ...“There are urban Yanomami who are educators and nurses. Some live in villages with individual huts. Some Yanomami children are in school, some play soccer. The times are changing. Traversing politics, healthcare and rapid rates of acculturation is overwhelming for them.”

“They may look like ‘primitive’ people but something about the way they live is superior,” Good said. “They don’t know loneliness, they don’t suffer from depression or anxiety. Their language doesn’t even have a word for suicide.”

29 May 2013 interview of David Good with Matthew Bannister: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p018qzzp

And from a BBC article of 29 Aug. 2013 about Kenneth, Yarima, and David Good's experience, by William Kremer:

The Yanomami live in 200-250 villages in an area of 60,000 square miles (96,500 square kilometres) of jungle, sprawling across the Venezuela-Brazil border.

...The Yanomami are a diverse group. They vary from relatively Westernised communities living close to church missions to villages which have no regular, direct contact with the outside world - although they will trade goods with villages that do.

Village life centres around a shapono - a large oval or round dwelling made out of wood. The entire village lives under the thatched roof of the shapono, cooking at separate family hearths and sleeping in hammocks. It is an arena for the rituals of trade and shamanism, for public rants and fights.

...Unlike doctors or psychologists, there is no fixed code of practice barring relationships between anthropologists and the subjects of their research. There is much debate about whether sex is ever permissible in the field, either for enjoyment or study.

...Age is unknown amongst the Yanomami since they have no counting system (they only have words for "one", "two" and "many"). So in his memoir, [Kenneth] Good is not specific about Yarima's age when they first had sex - he wrote that she was "about 15".

Yarima would have married another man if he had backed out of the betrothal. She had had her first period and so, in Yanomami culture, was of an age to settle with a husband and have a family.

"We're always trying to judge from our own perspective - an ethnocentric view," says David Good. "You have to keep in mind our ancestors didn't have to go through the maturation of adolescence that we have to go through in the modern world. Girls became married and started having children after their first period.

"And I always tell people, my father married my mother, but my mother also married my father. You know, it was a mutual agreement between two people and it's not like he snatched her away. This was a marriage based on love and romance and friendship."

...whenever he [anthropologist Kenneth Good] temporarily left, to make contact with academics or raise funds, Yarima was left in danger in the male-dominated Yanomami society.

On one of his trips downriver, when he had been held up for several months, she had been gang-raped, abducted and badly assaulted - her ear was ripped.

This precipitated Yarima's first contact with the modern world. Good took her to the town of Puerto Ayacucho, to get her ear attended to.

...Upriver Yanomami pictured nabuhs [or nabä - outsiders, Whites] living in villages much like their own, but with more nabuhs wearing their nabuh clothes. They had no idea that the forest ever came to an end, to be replaced by open spaces of cool hard ground and huge square houses.

...Yarima adapted to some things very quickly. ...After overcoming her initial fears, she loved travelling by car, motorbike and aeroplane. Wondrous machines like elevators, Good wrote in his memoir, she accepted as examples of nabuh magic. But other things were more difficult for her to grasp.

In the Amazon, food takes time to hunt or grow. It is never wasted or refused. "'Are you hungry?' is a question without meaning," wrote Good. "You might as well ask a person if he cared to breathe air." So the experience of a supermarket, in which an almost limitless amount of food sat, ready-picked and plucked, or of restaurants, where one was presented with a choice of what to eat, made the world feel upside down.

...[David Good's] sister Vanessa was born just over a year afterwards [in late 1987 or early 1988] on a banana leaf in the Amazon, while the family were on a trip back to [the Yanomami village at] Hasupuweteri.

...But life in New Jersey was not working out for Yarima. It wasn't the weather, food or modern technology but the absence of close human relations. The Yanomami day begins and ends in the shapono, open to relatives, friends, neighbours and enemies. But Yarima's day in the US began and ended in a closed box, cut off from society.

...In Hasupuweteri, the men disappeared for a few hours in the day to go hunting, but husbands did not disappear all day, every day.

[Interviewed while back in Hasupuweteri, Yarima said,] "They say I have become a nabuh," Yarima's translated voiceover tells us.

"I live in a place where I do not gather wood and no-one hunts. The women do not call me to go kill fish. Sometimes I get tired of being in the house, so I get angry with my husband. I go to the stores and look at clothing.

"It isn't like in the jungle. People are separate and alone. It must be that they do not like their mothers."

...Yarima [staying in the village] asked Kenneth to send Vanessa down to be raised in Hasupuweteri, but he refused.

...[While visiting the Yanomami village to reunite with his mother as adult,] Yarima began to push David to consummate marriages to the girls, who David thinks were in their late teens. On one occasion, while David was bathing in the river, the women ganged up on him, saying "Come on, we have to do this!"

..."The Yanomami have a particular sense of humour," says Caballero. "They always make jokes of everything and they love to tease, especially nabuhs."

The Yanomami have little concept of the very different lives of outsiders. Many put nabuhs' lack of practical and language skills down to the only thing it could be - stupidity.

"I would say Yanomami keye - I am Yanomami," says David. "And then I would fall down riverbanks, I'd trip over vines, I'd hit the wrong tree and all these biting ants would fall on my head… They just thought it was absolutely hilarious."

...On a separate visit to the mission - this time with his mother - David managed to establish a Skype connection with his father.

"My father said to my mum, 'You still look young and beautiful'. And she said, 'You look old!'"

Yarima was disturbed by Kenneth Good's baldness, since the Yanomami do not go bald. He had to run and get a baseball cap before they could continue the conversation.

www.documentary.org/column/anthropologists-behaving-badly-jose-padilhas-secrets-tribe-does-some-digging-its-own

Anthropologists Behaving Badly: Jose Padilha's 'Secrets of the Tribe' Does Some Digging of Its Own

BY SHARI KIZIRIAN | MON, 02/14/2011

In the first moments of José Padilha's Secrets of the Tribe, about the anthropologists who study the Yanomami, we learn exactly what the observed think of the observer: "You Nabäs are always such liars," says one tribesman. "I don't like to believe anything you say because you always lie." After watching this 96-minute film that documents a "he said-he said" war of egos fought among ethically dubious anthropologists on opposing sides of a theoretical debate that includes accusations of genocide and pederasty, it's hard to disagree.

Insulated by the dense rain forests along the border of Venezuela and Brazil, the Yanomami became known to the outside world as vicious and fearsome after the publication of American anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon's groundbreaking study, Yanomamö: The Fierce People. Released in 1968, it describes the tribe, thought to have descended from the Asians who first crossed the Bering Strait, as warring over women and celebrating in hallucinogenic frenzies.

The data Chagnon collected for his book and the films he made with Timothy Asch seemed definitive evidence in support of biological determinism, which purports that genes and the evolutionary imperative to pass them on are the primary forces that shape human culture. Chagnon had made his career, and his rise in academia only cemented the Yanomami's reputation as "Fierce People." The book became de rigueur in Anthro 101 courses on campuses around the world and has since been reissued in five editions, selling more than four million copies. It was also a herald to other anthropologists and scientists who beat a path to the jungle in order to gather their own data among the last unacculturated peoples in the world--data that paint radically different pictures of the Yanomami.

In Secrets of the Tribe, Padilha interviews an entire roster of Who's Who in American Anthropology to explore the controversy that first entered the mainstream with Patrick Tierney's November 2006 New Yorker article, "Fierce Anthropologist." Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon, published that same year, is a dense catalogue of unethical and illegal actions perpetrated not only by Chagnon, but also by his colleagues: Dr. James Neel, a geneticist doing research for the Atomic Energy Commission; Venezuelan naturalist Charles Brewer Carías, who had ties to gold-mining interests; and Collège de France's respected linguist Jacques Lizot, who traded goods for sex with Yanomami boys. Also revealing how governments, fellow academics and missionaries cast a blind eye toward these atrocities, the book landed like a bomb and blew up an entire discipline.

"Mike Chamberlain [of Britain's Stampede Films] took Tierney's article to Nick Fraser at BBC, and Nicky called me," says Padilha, whose Bus 174 was a big success for BBC Storyville back in 2002. When I spoke with the Brazilian filmmaker in April 2010, he was fresh from the opening-night screening of Secrets of the Tribe at the Rio version of It's All True, Brazil's 15-year-old documentary festival. He was also in the midst of post-production on his sequel to Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad), a fiction feature about the take-no-prisoners police force that is attempting to wrest control of Rio's slums from entrenched drug lords. When I ask why he chose to make Secrets, his answer is surprising: "Because I love science."

A student of math and physics, Padilha turned to filmmaking after a brief, unsatisfying career in banking. Since producing 1999's The Charcoal People under the wing of Oscar-winning documentarian Nigel Noble, Padilha and his production partner Marcos Prado have made several films together, acting as producer on each other's projects. In his documentaries, Padilha takes an aesthetic approach called for by the material. To reconstruct the tragic life story of the hijacker of a Rio city bus in Bus 174, he used the plentiful news and amateur footage taken at the scene, which was badly managed by local authorities. Garapa, his 2009 documentary about the effects of chronic hunger on three families in Brazil's arid northeast, was shot cinema vérité style on black-and-white 35mm film and finished without music. The Golden Bear-winning Tropa de Elite would have been a documentary, if, as Padilha told me in a 2009 interview, he didn't fear for his life. For Secrets of the Tribe, Padilha knew immediately it would primarily consist of talking heads, with each scientist and the surviving Yanomami having their say.

To interview the Yanomami, Padilha did what those before him had done: He paid them. "Everything is trade with the Yanomami," he explains. How did he get Chagnon to willingly revisit the allegations that forced the embattled anthropologist into early retirement? "I say I am making a film about science," Padilha explains. "Everyone thinks they are the good scientists and everyone else is doing bad science.

"The methodology of anthropology is flawed," Padilha continues. "Each anthropologist finds exactly the evidence to fit his paradigm. To destroy the data you have to destroy the person. Who cares how you feel about Einstein? Take his data to the lab and see if what he says holds up. No one ever said that about Einstein, but you get my point...Chagnon doesn't agree with Ken Good, so he says, ‘Oh, he married a teenager.'"

The cavalcade of bickering eggheads that Padilha created in the editing room is riveting, sometimes even funny. The interviews with the Yanomami, who describe entire villages of people dying, sexual abuse and the havoc wrought by anthropologists who traded information for steel axes and machetes, create a cumulative effect that can only be described as heartbreak. Watching archival footage of Yanomami: A Multidisciplinary Study (1968) and The Feast (1970), both shot by Asch during the joint Neel-Chagnon study on a measles vaccine, we learn that most of the people on film died shortly thereafter.

Pieces of Jean-Pierre Marchand's collaboration with Jacques Lizot, Les indiens Yanomami (1968), stands in for Lizot, who declined Padilha's request for an interview. (He is now sought by French police on an unrelated molestation charge and is thought to be in Morocco.) "The film is very candid on Lizot, yet I did not touch the surface of what he did," says Padilha. "The French injected the Yanomami with radioactive isotopes. The French side is much uglier than it looks in the film."

The French arm of ARTE is one of the co-production partners on Secrets of the Tribe and, it turns out, protective of Jacques Lizot and the Collège de France, where Lizot's mentor Claude Lévi-Strauss was chair of social anthropology. ARTE asked Padilha to put Lizot's pederasty in context. "Many of these [commissioning] editors come from liberal arts, anthropology backgrounds," says the filmmaker. "No one thinks about the kids." For his part, he sent the filmed testimony to Interpol in Brazil, which sent it on to France. "Lizot can be active somewhere right now," he notes. "When I showed [the footage] to the French, they didn't even consider this. If Lizot had molested French boys? Yanomami kids are far away. They intellectualize it as somehow excusable."

Anthropologists behaving badly is nothing new. Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology, asked Arctic explorer Robert Peary to bring him back "a middle-aged Eskimo, preferably from Greenland," for the American Museum of Natural History's live dioramas. Within eight months, four of the six Inuits Peary delivered had died of tuberculosis. Congolese pygmy Ota Benga lived at the museum and later at New York's Bronx Zoo before killing himself. Ishi, the last of the California Yahi Indians, lived at the University of California's Museum of Anthropology, and some of his remains were shipped off to the Smithsonian. Robert Flaherty--whose Nanook of the North unleashed a controversy in ethnographic filmmaking that continues today--fathered an Inuit son he later refused to acknowledge, or help. Even the ethically meticulous Margaret Mead admitted to having considered a sexual affair with one of the Samoans she was studying.

Today, anthropology is going through another round of soul-searching. Barbara Rose Johnston, who saw Secrets when it premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, invited Padilha and his film to the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting, held in November in New Orleans. "I think it is a trap," Padilha joked back in April. "Maybe they will try to kill me." The film, minus its director, became part of a panel exploring the ethics of the discipline and, in a move that cannot be coincidental, the AAA decided to drop the word "science" from its statement on long-range plans. "The thing is, I think that biology has a lot to do with behavior," Padilha says." But the science is clumsy. Chagnon is an embarrassment to sociobiology. This film will help that."

No matter how anthropology decides to settle its debates, it is clear from the film that the Yanomami reached a verdict long ago. "Look here, they are taking my picture again," one man points at Padilha's camera. "You should be ignorant of us."

Secrets of the Tribes airs March 2 on HBO. The film is distributed in the international broadcast market through Sideways Film, and in the worldwide educational market through Documentary Educational Resources, which also distributes Timothy Asch and Napoleon Chagnon's Yanamamö Series, including The Feast and Yanomami: A Multidisciplinary Study.

Shari Kizirian currently lives in Rio de Janeiro

Bibliography

Info resources: list reputable books, videos, podcasts, etc. which others should be aware of

Russel Means: anti-industry & anti-Marxism
Books for kids and young adult
Climate Wars - Harald Welzer (2012)
TLDR: The 48 Laws of Power (by Robert Greene)
book review: The Nazi Seizure of Power (W.S. Allan, 2014)
book review: El Político (Azorín, 1908)
book review: The Organizer's Manual (OM Collective, 1971)
Climate Wars (Gwynne Dyer, 2010)
My Name Is Chellis & I'm in Recovery -- C. Glendinning (1994
book: Technopoly (Neil Postman, 1992)
book: Sapiens (Yuval Noah Hariri, 2015)
book: The Old Way (Elizabeth M. Thomas, 2006)
book: Ishi in Two Worlds (Theodora Kroeber, 1961)
movie: Surviving Progress (2011)
movie: Coconut Revolution (2001)
movie: Alone in the Wilderness (2003)
movie: Bright Green Lies (2021)
series: Tribe with Bruce Parry (2005) season 1
movie: Wiebo's War (2011)
TK Translations Masterdoc
primitives' uses of fire
Henry Murray, Alston Chase, and Kaczynski's "insanity"
human-induced extinctions, the forever debate
two series on low-tech living by modern people

The Ted K Archive

staggeringdefeat

Nov 20, 2022

This isn't going to be a detailed post; it is to spread awareness of the Ted K Archive which can be found here.

Take a look. It contains a lot TK's available work all in one place.

scbroom

Nov 29, 2022

Just as a warning to anyone that isn't aware: the guy behind the archive describes himself as a "pro-tech left-anarchist" that believes the destruction of civilization would make the elimination of nature MORE likely than if civilization were to continue.

Also, he is working on an open discussion page on the "politics of technology" with the intent of swaying anti-tech individuals. He is "looking for pro-tech anarchists who are up for coming up with good arguments to pull conspiracy minded anti-tech people back from the edge, as well as dispel the idea that what's healthiest psychologically for humans is being at the whims of natural inequalities that we could easily overcome collectively."

If you would like to counter his weak arguments then the discussion page can be found here: www.thetedkarchive.com/library/theo-slade-normandie-etc-a-collaboratively-edited-conversation-on-anti-tech-politics

documentary: Pygmies, Children of the Jungle (2011)

Jorge Clúni

Oct 26, 2022

Pygmies, Children of the Jungle (2011)

700mb, [Redacted Pirate Mega Link]

IMDB.com page

Why it's relevant: Very insightful as to the culture and practices of a HG group still (barely) existing. Here are my own notes:

a tribal man gets bitten by a snake, applies a restricting band, drinks from a water vine and ventures into the jungle to find a medicinal plant for treatment;
the pygmies (a Greek word) call themselves "Baka" ("báh-KAH"), which means "people" - this is typical of tribal groups, whose group name invariably means "people" (while their neighbors are always referred to as "animals";
the tribe wants and appreciates tobacco (as always), and they use a smoldering coal of wood to light the cigarettes they're given;
to facilitate honey collection from a hive ~50 feet up in a tree, the tribal chief chases demons from around the tree via chanting and smudging/smoke;
a man ascends the tree by vines dangling from its canopy, hauls up a smoldering bunch of branches, and (using his free hand) pulls from the beehive;
the men on the ground weave a basket and send that up the tree for holding the acquired honeycomb;
their shelters seem to be wattle-and-chinking constructions;
a ritual of chanting and smudging precedes a hunt, in order to push away negative spirits and bless the hunting party with good fortune;
the hunt is co-ed, but sexual intercourse is forbidden the night before a hunt, and a menstruating woman is not allowed to participate in rousting game, nor is she to be fed of any of the hunt;
the tribe keeps dogs;
the hunters can identify game scent, and by the footprint of the animal, the hunters can determine the prey's sex, size, age;
caterpillars are used as a condiment, and also as trade currency;
killing an elephant brings great esteem upon the hunter; this is done by stalking up to the creature and cutting a leg tendon so that it cannot walk well, then following it for days until it is immobilized, at which point its trunk is cut off so that it will bleed to death;
some Congolese soldiers believe that eating pygmies will give them the skills and knowledge of the pygmies, and there is some market supply of pygmie meat;
Baka pygmies don't hunt gorilla, whom they regard as kings of the jungle;
the documentarian says he hasn't heard children cry, except when they look at the foreigners of the documentary crew;
the men and women of the tribe wear clothing over their genitals (as usual);
a tribal man reports that hiding in the jungle, up in a tree, is a Black man wearing camouflage and with an automatic rifle, presumably a Congolese soldier, and this causes the documentary crew to depart suddenly.

Slovakian documentarian Ivan Bulik makes this piece to culminate his many travels through Africa. Despite some negative reviews decrying it as "offensive," "appalling," "racist," an "patronizing" - complete nonsense claims, in my eyes - here are two positive IMDB reviews:

This documentary was well done. It does take you on a journey that opens you up to the harsh truths of Africa then focuses on the pygmy people and the crews interactions. The way these people survive is incredible and the film shows just how beautiful these people are, as well as provide incredible footage of how they live, hunt and treat each other, and the incredible nature of the Congo.

One aspect I wish they focused more on was how these people resolve everything through dancing, from young to old they dance for everything. It is really incredible and worth watching just for that. The film narrator highlights the virtues off their life often and that their way of life is under attack and I agree wholeheartedly. These people are very kind and deserve to have their way of life preserved, especially from armed militant soldiers. But given the time they had with these people and the reason for them leaving stated at the end, it is a plausible reason as to not showing the dancing as a larger part.

Overall a very nice documentary, spend some time and gain a little perspective watching this.

I found this documentary on Netflix streaming. Anyone fascinated by the diversity of peoples in our world will enjoy this film.

I learned that the word "pygmy" has Greek origins and literally meant 'the length measured from elbow to knuckles.' Today the word Pygmy commonly refers to "any of a small people of equatorial Africa ranging under five feet in height."

The thing about the Pygmies in this documentary, they pretty much live the way they have for thousands of years. They have no refrigerators or lights, they keep no permanent homes. The women of the tribe can build a hut in minutes, with sticks in the ground bent into shape and then woven with banana tree leaves.

So each grows up to recognize quite a variety of edible plants and animals, including snails, grubs, roots, berries, etc. The men are expert at finding honey high in the forest and harvesting it. When they hunt they put up nets. The men wait as the women make a wide perimeter and drive animals towards the nets. They eat about anything, monkeys, antelope, porcupines, rats. Meat will spoil in the warm and humid jungle so food is cooked and consumed. They live from day to day.

The Pygmies are gentle people, and not very well respected by many other tribes of people. The narrator commented that they may not exist much longer.

Good documentary.

Links & Contacts

contacts to groups and professionals that are allied or can aid the AT cause

Katie Singer

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Primitive Skillshare

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Prisoner Outreach

Provide contact info and how & why you've engaged them

sending Tech Slavery and/or ATR to captives

Source: <anti-tech.freeforums.net/thread/31/sending-tech-slavery-atr-captives>

Date: Oct 28, 2022

Jorge Clúni

In late 2019 I wrote to Ross Ulbricht, and also Martin Shkreli, and to a handful of lesser-known convicts around the country, and I sent to them all either Tech Slavery and/or Anti-Tech Revolution, as well as the "Ship of Fools" story.

Just to validate my claim, see here: imgur.com/a/jIuZbER

I think Ulbricht was/is still hopeful for his case to be reopened, or for his sentence to be commuted, and does not want to be seen approaching anything controversial (much less anything revolutionary), nor at this point even appear to 'rock the boat'; Shkreli was, I think, just waiting out his time, and is now free (and, if media reports are accurate, pursuing a rap career). In any case, the idea for reaching these two specifically is that both are obviously smart guys; Shkreli knew first-hand how the media can portray someone for the benefit of the reporters and the media institution, while Ulbricht has experienced govt. misconduct and breaking of their own rules. (It's not clear exactly what happened in his case, but it's pretty apparent that all was not as the govt. portrayed.)

The idea in reaching all the other prisoners I have already written to - avg. criminal "nobodies" found through writeaprisoner.com - was to get TK's books into their institutions. I knew upfront that in all likelihood, they would not be swayed by the readings to becoming anti-tech revolutionaries, but that in that case they will surely leave the books in the facility to circulate among the inmates. And I think there is use in this, since I now believe that it will be more likely to turn criminals into (radical) "environmentalists" than to turn Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion types into (revolutionary) criminals.

And so I encourage others to browse through writeaprisoner.com or to pick some "political prisoners" or "prisoners of conscience" and write to them and then send to them one of TK's books.

scbroom

Dec 18, 2022

Another way to get Kaczynski's books into prisons is to check and see if there is a "Books to Prisoners" program near you. I checked with the one near me and they are interested in my extra copies of Technological Slavery and ATR: Why and How, so I'll drop those off when I get the chance. They were also interested in a Spanish translation of Industrial Society and Its Future, which I was planning on purchasing, but I don't see any way to order a physical copy to the U.S.

Click here to see a list of Books to Prisoners programs in the United States, Canada, and Britain

Proof, if anyone cares:

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selling TK books

Jorge Clúni

Jan 23, 2023

A wholesale box of books can be purchased from TK's publisher Fitch & Madison.

The minimum quantity is 28 of either Anti-Tech Revolution or Technological Slavery vol. 1.

28 × Tech Slavery is $300 ($11 ea.); selling those at cover price of $20 ea. = $560.

28 × ATR is $250 ($9 ea.); selling those at cover price of $16 ea. yields $448.

A few years ago I got a box of Tech. Slavery and sent copies out to the twelve friends I judged most receptive.

treewanderer

Jan 25, 2023

This is a potentially very good idea, and I'd also like to voice my support for your sending of books to friends. Giving people you judge to be receptive something to read is a great way to spread the message. Keep going, the tides are turning against technology.

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